Nick Eidem, advanced powder product

[Pictures of metal injection molded parts provided by Advanced Powder Products]

Metal injection molding (MIM) technology can efficiently and economically deliver thousands or millions of parts. Nevertheless, it still relies on custom-designed and built hard tools-the simple reality of all MIM processors. Therefore, medical equipment engineers often ask: "How do we obtain the efficiency of MIM through the design and production verification phase? Is additive manufacturing the answer?"

Although it will not weaken the significant contribution and development of additive manufacturing, there are still some limiting factors that need to be addressed. Additive manufacturing may be the fastest way to obtain functional metal parts, but these parts are not representative of production. Compared with the production of MIM components, the "granular" or "granular" surface finish and endurance exhibited by additives are poor; this is where today's technology lies.

The choice between additive manufacturing and MIM is complementary. Medical design engineers and MIM manufacturers are applying their material expertise to adhesive jet 3D printing technology. Binder jet 3D printing is an additive manufacturing process that uses MIM powder and a sintering furnace to create 3D printed functional MIM parts. Parts produced by 3D printing with adhesive jetting are different from real metal injection molded parts. However, many MIM processors use this technology to perform processing experiments to shorten the development lead time while demonstrating rapid design iterations. The question remains, how do we bridge the gap between 3D metal printing prototypes and production tools. The logical solution for the engineering and supply chain communities is to build prototype "hard" tools to replicate actual MIM production components. Ultimately, this can shorten the time to market without complicating the verification and regulatory process steps. The production-proven feature of MIM components produced by prototype tools is a valuable solution to this problem.

The key is to create the concept of prototyping tools that can be designed, built, and modified—to produce MIM components in a faster way. Although this seems "very simple", it is not as easy as people initially thought. Intuitively, the design community assumes that MIM tools and plastic injection molding tools, at least in the prototyping phase, are similar. Designers sometimes think that they can make tools from materials with lower hardness, perhaps even aluminum. This assumption is inaccurate due to the abrasiveness of MIM powder, the turbulent characteristics of MIM powder under pressure, and the unique viscosity associated with MIM powder. Understanding the limitations of traditional tool design provides the motivation for MIM processors to study alternatives. Production tools are designed to maximize efficiency and capacity, and often include advanced technology to monitor cycle time, material flow, and cavity pressure, thereby increasing build time and speed to market.

Speed ​​to market may be a major constraint in the medical device market, leading to pressure to consider alternative paths. MIM industry plans continue to evolve to make progress in prototype tool alternatives, some of which have reduced time by 50%. For any metal injection molder, the natural thing is to promote changes in the mold development process.

The development of MIM prototypes exists in today's MIM world, and the medical device industry should seriously consider it. MIM prototyping can also generate up to thousands of direct parts-this is a good process to start any program or even modify the situation of existing MIM components. In addition, the cost basis is only a small part of the production tool, which gives end users more confidence in the development to production stage.

MIM is an exciting and evolving new technological process that requires a lot of collaboration between the medical device team and the processor. The partnership with Advanced Powder Products (APP) provides a unique technology platform that includes prototyping tools, ProtoMIM and other complementary additive manufacturing capabilities, and even adhesive jetting.

To learn more about rapid MIM prototyping for apps, please visit advancedpowderproducts.com.

Nick Eidem is the business development director of Advanced Powder Products. Nick has more than 10 years of experience in manufacturing and sales.

The views expressed in this blog post are only those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of MedicalDesignandOutsourcing.com or its employees.

Subscription medical design and outsourcing. Bookmark, share and interact with leading medical design engineering journals today.

DeviceTalks is a dialogue between medical technology leaders. It is events, podcasts, webinars, and one-on-one exchanges of ideas and insights.

Medical device business magazine. MassDevice is a leading medical device news business journal that tells the story of life-saving devices.

Copyright © 2021 WTWH Media, LLC. all rights reserved. Site Map| Privacy Policy| RSS