Medical Motion: You Say You Want a Revolution; Well then, You Need to See This

FlexTac is high-density contact technology enabling smaller and more robust medical devices.

The medical electronics industry is one of the fastest growing market segments in today’s global economy. The drive to reduce size and weight, while increasing functionality, has consistently been on the rise during the past few years. To do so, requires the electronics designed into medical devices to be smaller and more robust. This presents a need for dependable interconnect solutions in a smaller format as it is rapidly becoming a critical requirement across multiple industry and application disciplines. The medical device arena is certainly no exception to this technological evolution. In fact, it is riding the crest of a wave of change that is washing over the medical community.

Looking through the reality lens, today, in a growing number of real-world scenarios, the choice of connectors in an application environment is little more than an afterthought. Nobody ever wants to fail, nobody ever sets out to fall short of the mark, and yet it can and does happen. However, things are not all gloomy, and all is certainly not lost. Avoiding mistakes can be simply by making the right choice from among the broad array of products that proliferate across the industry today. In addition, making the right choices can go a long way in holding down expenses.

While much of the world sometimes may appear to have a myopic view of the critical importance of choosing the right interconnect solution, design engineers should select the right connector for a specific operating environment as opposed to the one that is expedient or is the most cost-effective. The solution that has the ability to deliver on its promises, when called upon, each and every time, is always the right one.

The design engineering team at Hypertronics has looked at the issue closely and has developed FlexTac; a new interconnect technology solution that offers a leg-up on avoiding those costly mistakes; the fear of which keeps decision-makers across the customer community awake in the wee hours of the night.

FlexTac is a unique interconnect technology that offers customers a durable and dependable high-density solution package with vastly higher cycle life, low contact resistance, and immunity to shock and vibration. As an interconnect technology, the high density of the FlexTac offering provides many more points of contact for each connection. It features multiple contact wires along the surface of each pin, as opposed to the limited number of contact points that are available today from competitive offerings. FlexTac offers higher contact density and delivers higher reliability in applications translating to a rise in patient comfort and peace of mind based on the highest reliability available, relevant to the information that is carried through the electrical connectors that are in use.

With a goal to achieve, typically being a reduction in size and weight, this challenges the electrical component manufacturers with the task of designing their components to achieve the size reduction while maintaining the dependability that medical device engineers demand.

FlexTac offers a smaller and lighter solution without compromising technical efficiency and capability. In fact, from a connector-contact perspective, its capabilities stand out strong.

Top: The high density of the FlexTac offering provides many points of contact for each connection. Bottom: FlexTac offers a smaller and lighter solution without compromising technical efficiency and capability.

At this time, Hypertronics is the lone connector company in the industry with the design capability to offer customers a high density, long cycle life, and lower contact resistance interconnect solution, placing the company out in front of the rest of the competitive pack.

For more than four decades, Hypertronics has been a leader of connector solutions. With its introduction of the Hypertac technology, an advanced hyperboloid contact design that ushered-in a level of performance and reliability was, at the time of its launch, thought to be unattainable. Today, FlexTac, which embodies all of the expertise, thought, and innovation that went into the Hypertac technology is a brand new technology designed to provide much smaller packaged interconnection and/or the vastly higher pin count needed for smaller systems where space is often quite limited.

Hypertronics has listened to its customers, and more importantly, the company has heard what the customer community has to say. Development of FlexTac was to ensure the maintaining of electrical integrity, and the highest reliability, under extreme operating conditions. Again, as therapeutic, diagnostic, and monitoring devices continue to downsize, the electronic connectors that plug into them must also follow suit and become smaller in order to avoid running the risk of hampering the designer’s ability to shrink the size of the device.

In today’s world, there is indeed a growing demand for healthcare solutions that are more cost-effective and far less invasive. As such, the medical equipment segment continues to be a burgeoning growth area for the electronic components industry. In the grand design, the demand for smaller and more reliable devices in the medical industry will remain quite robust for the foreseeable future. When all is said and done, not only are connectors a critical electrical ingredient in the overall recipe for success, they are also often the best way to introduce a completely dependable design. Customized features are key elements in medical instruments, and Hypertronics feels that the introduction of its FlexTac product will speak volumes as a critical, and revolutionary, interconnect solution for the medical device industry.

About the Author
Allyssa Skidmore is a senior design engineer with Hypertronics Corp., Hudson, MA. Skidmore certified to UL, CA, and TUV test standards, has been granted several patents for designs that she has developed. Allyssa is responsible for a broad range of design engineering responsibilities across multiple application disciplines at Hypertronics Corp. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, a certificate in Plastics Technologies from Nypro Institute, and is currently enrolled in a Masters Program at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, MA.

Hypertronics Corp. (now owned by Smiths Interconnect)
https://www.smithsinterconnect.com/