Global contract manufacturer Lincotek Medical has recently brought casting and finishing under one roof at its plant in Portland, Oregon. The Lincotek Medical Portland facility historically provided castings for a vast range of customers in the medical industry. With the newly-installed, state-of-the-art finishing line, Lincotek Medical will move a step further and provide medical device customers with a unique integrated approach, starting from the casting to the finished product – all in one location.

With this investment, Lincotek Medical will be able to provide finished products in a cost-effective process at shortest possible lead time. The site can be easily scaled up to any potential demand. The global knee replacement market is well established and this new, integrated solution will be of a particular interest in terms of competitiveness and risk mitigation to customers working in this sophisticated sector.

The completed plant layout is now almost ready to go live. All the machines are in place and will be validated over the next few weeks.

The new set up – having the entire process, from design through casting to delivery of a finished part, under a single and integrated production flow – will create huge advantages for medical device customers, ranging from inventory reduction to best in class quality standards, significant reduction of supply chain complexity and increased reliability.

Apart from extending the facility and floor space, two brand new tool-grinding machines have been introduced, as well as an operational three-stage drag finishing system. In addition, Lincotek has invested in polishing and buffing lathes and a laser-marking facility, which complement an existing passivation service.

A second stage to the project is already planned, which has the potential to double the capacity.

Mike Meiggs, president of Lincotek Medical in the United States for integrated supply chain solutions, comments: “The past year has been about creating an integrated offer with a true ‘concept to launch’ business model and we are now more than satisfied with our progress. We have made significant investments in technology in our US plants with a capital program aimed at a complete capability upgrade over the next few years. As a result, we are able to create an ever-more seamless and integrated service for our customers.”

Typically associated with high-volume sheet metal production, press brakes can form metal components for medical instruments, surgical tools, and testing devices, still meeting stringent tolerances for quality, size, and precision. Press brakes can form a large variety of medical components and allow manufacturers to maximize production and save costs with today’s technology.

Forming medical parts

Growing demand for autoclave sterilization, surgical trays, and robotic surgery systems means companies must produce parts faster with higher consistency. Elk Grove Village, Illinois-based MC Machinery offers two main press brake series that offer higher throughput with medical-grade consistency. BB series all-electric, small form factor, small footprint machines are driven by AC servo motors and ball screw drive mechanisms. They maximize productivity with high ram speeds and high-precision repeatability (1µm).

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Coiled spring pins were designed for assembly. Compared to other pins, the square ends, concentric chamfers, and lower insertion forces ease installation. Additionally, coiled pins can accommodate wider hole tolerances better than any other pin type because they compress during installation and conform to the shape of the hole. Coiled pins are the easiest type of pin to install and are designed to be serviceable.

The coiled pin’s nominal diameter represents the recommended hole size for the product into which it’s being installed. Coiled spring pin design guidelines provide the recommended hole tolerance range. The coiled pin’s pre-installed diameter is greater than the hole size, and the chamfer diameter is smaller than the hole. During installation, the swaged chamfer aligns the coiled pin with the hole and facilitates compression of the coils as it’s driven into position.

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Festoannounces it now offers diagnostic and testing devicemanufacturers a one-stop-shop for world-class vial sorting, decapping, kinematic sample-handling, and fluid dispensing solutions. This critical mass of life sciences automation products from Festo will enable device manufacturers to bring products designated for pandemic-related diagnostics and testing to market faster and with lower engineering overhead.

“The pandemic has created an urgent need to ramp up development and production of high-speed diagnostic and testing equipment,” said Craig Correia, Director of Life Science, Festo North America. “Festo is not only expanding its range of product and system solutions, but also is allocating resources in terms of custom engineering and assembly.” 

Festo medical device components are designed and manufactured in an ISO 13485 quality environment, which makes validation easier and reduces time-to-market for lab device manufacturers. The company’s global logistics infrastructure ensures rapid delivery and replacement of core products, and its global technical support team minimizes downtime. 

Grippers, kinematic systems and components, liquid dispensing modules, and sensors
The versatile EHMD compact rotary gripper caps and decaps sample vials, loads centrifuges, and grips, rotates, and places microwell plates. An optional module with Z compensation automatically adjusts to cap thread pitch, which increases throughout by eliminating the need for head-adapter changeover. Combined with a EXCM planar surface gantry handling system and a camera, the EHMD gripper supports quality inspection, barcode reading, and label printing.

The EHPS family of parallel electric grippers and extensive range of pneumatic grippers provide additional solutions for handling trays, vial, and plates. For additional kinematic solutions beyond the EXCM gantry, Festo offers the EGSC/ELGC modular linear actuators, the ERMO rotary actuator, and the new EHML space savings telescoping slide.

The EXCM gantry, which is ordered as either a drop-in assembly or quick-to-assemble kit, can be integrated with a VTOE eight-liquid valve manifold. The VTOE features a 9 mm pitch channel for filling an entire row of microwell plates simultaneously. A single new VAEM solenoid valve controller operates all eight channels of the VTOE. VAEM rapid and precise control can decrease coefficient of variation (CV) from 3% to less than .5%. Having a single compact controller reduces component count and space requirements.

The new VYKA dosing valve from Festo is a media separated solenoid valve that precisely dispenses fluids and controls flow in manifold duct plates for continuous flow applications. The VYKA is suitable for EXCM gantry system mounting.

For bar code reading and fill level sensing, Festo solutions provide simple setup and configuration. Product solutions in the vision and sensors category include the SBSI vision sensor for object and barcode sensing, the SOEG optoelectronic infrared sensor, the SOOF fork light barrier, and the SOEC color sensor.

For applications where standard-sized desktop kinematic systems are not feasible, Festo’s dedicated team designs custom gantries and liquid handling systems. Custom solutions range from simple two axis gantries to full subsystems performing complex tasks.

The Festo Technology Engineering Center (TEC), located just north of Boston, works with individual customers on automated motion and fluid handling solutions. The TEC is the company’s first engineering center in the United States devoted to the life sciences, developing new high speed, high accuracy fluid handling products based on pneumatic principles.