Anaheim, Californi – Electron Beam Engineering Inc. (EBE), an established precision electron beam and laser beam welding company, has announced that its design and welding expertise has helped ZELTIQ keep up with today’s growing demand for its CoolSculpting Device.
“ZELTIQ selected Electron Beam Engineering as their welding vendor for the liquid-cooled heat exchanger of their CoolSculpting device because of our extensive experience in precision welding of medical devices,” said Grant Trillwood, general manager at EBE. “We quickly discovered that the original part had a complicated design, causing a time consuming manufacturing process and making it difficult to produce in volume. We approached ZELTIQ with an idea of how to simplify their design, and after development of the new design and welding trials, we started producing the complete assembly.”
The inside of the device has a maze of grooves that coolant runs through to evenly distribute the cold to the entire surface area. This allows the device to deliver the precise controlled cooling needed to gently and effectively target the fat cells underneath the skin. Trillwood’s team helped change the design of the inlet and outlet ports to bring down the material costs by about 15%. They also simplified the exchanger cover which resulted in less scrap as well as reducing the amount of rework. The EBE recommended design modifications saved ZELTIQ about 20% in manufacturing costs as well as streamlining the production process.
Production is performed with an EBE manufactured welder that is programmed to follow a complex welding profile to automatically control the weld parameters, producing not only structurally pressure-tight welds, but neat, narrow welds that don’t require post weld finishing. Once the parts are manufactured, EBE pressure tests them to make sure there aren’t any leaks. There is also a final machining cut on one surface that ensures that it is perfectly flat within 1/1,000th of an inch with a 63rms finish. Then it is laser-etched with a part number and chemically coated with a protective finish to prevent corrosion, a step that is also common in the aerospace industry.
“With any customer, our goal is to not only meet their welding needs, but to review their designs and make recommendations enabling us to manufacture a superior product more quickly. In this case, we were able to cut manufacturing time by 20% allowing us to meet ZELTIQ’s production demands, while allowing them to meet the increased demand for their FDA-approved CoolSculpting device.”
Source: Electron Beam Engineering