Trelleborg's innovations in medical device components


Trelleborg Healthcare & Medical will unveil advanced polymer solutions for healthcare and medical applications such as drug-eluting capabilities, its rapid development center, tubing and hose and molded parts, and multicomponent and micro-molding offerings.

“In recent years, we’ve seen a spike in demand from our customer-partners for devices that incorporate an Advanced Pharmaceutical Ingredient, an API, for targeted delivery of a therapy,” says Andrew Gaillard, Global Commercial Director of Healthcare & Medical. “Whether faced with a wound-care application that requires wafer-thin silicone gel films with a drug element incorporated, or an innovative approach to cancer treatment with unique manufacturing challenges, our engineering teams are ready to partner with customers to help solve interesting and complex problems.”

Trelleborg’s recently launched Rapid Development Center helps healthcare and medical customers expedite their new product development process, minimize production costs, quicken development time, and ensure superior-quality products.

Trelleborg’s selection of its specialty extruded tubing and hose products are available in a full range of sizes and custom designed with customers to meet their individual application needs.

“We engineer novel extrusion solutions for our customers’ specific tube and hosing applications,” notes Gaillard. “Examples include multi-lumen, silicone foam extrusions, and kink-resistant tubing for a variety of critical applications, such as pacemaker and neuromodulation leads and urological implants. Additionally, Trelleborg’s GeoTrans technology enables the production of extrusion profiles that can change throughout the length of the extrusion, supporting unique, customer-specific designs.”

Molded parts can be used in implantable healthcare and medical devices alongside multicomponent and micromolding capabilities.

“One of our most well accepted capabilities is the combination of Liquid Silicone Rubber (LSR) with plastics. Commonly referred to as 2C or 2-shot, multicomponent injection molding enables our LSR experts to employ highly sophisticated tool and process engineering to develop innovative solutions that combine two or more individual materials into one fully bonded, robust component,” Gaillard concludes.