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Since 2012, Raumedic (Helmbrechts, Germany) and material developer ElringKlinger Kunststofftechnik (Bietigheim-Bissingen, Germany) have reached an agreement on clean room extrusion rights, successfully extruding Moldflon PTFE for its medical customers. This material has been favored by medical manufacturers because it offers significant advantages for continuous extruded tubing compared to traditional PTFE. Raumedic has just announced that it has further developed Moldflon clean room extrusion materials suitable for a range of medical device applications and has conducted tests to prove the material's advantages in secondary thermoforming operations such as tipping and flaring. The company will showcase its latest capabilities at MD&M East in New York City next month.
Moldflon is a biocompatible thermoplastic that has similar physical properties to traditional PTFE in terms of melting point, continuous use temperature, coefficient of friction, tensile strength and dielectric constant. The outer diameter of Moldflon PTFE lining can be chemically etched with sodium naphthalene or plasma activation, which is an environment and workplace friendly technology.
Unlike traditional PTFE which is processed by batch plunger extrusion, Moldflon is processed continuously on a single screw melt extruder. Raumedic said that this is very beneficial for long-term, continuous PTFE pipe production operations and co-extruded PTFE with radiopaque fringes.
Steve Maxson, Raumedic's technical sales manager, said that a significant development of this material involves applications that involve lubricating catheter linings and thin wire insulation of electrical stimulation devices. Moldflon can be extruded on a silver-plated copper or stainless steel mandrel at a very low volume on a micro-extruder, and is used for lining pipes with wall thicknesses as low as 0.0005 inches (0.013 mm). Other applications include single-lumen tubes with wall thicknesses as low as 0.001 inches (0.025 mm), multi-lumen tubes, IV catheter tubes with co-extrusion encapsulated radiopaque stripes, miniature cannulas for insulin delivery, and lumens The reel (rod) support.
In addition to extrusion advantages, Moldflon is said to have significant advantages in secondary thermoforming operations. Traditional PTFE is prone to poor post-processing, such as tipping and flaring, and has a long cycle time. According to reports, tests conducted by some leading thermoforming companies in the medical industry have shown that the thin-walled tapered tip made of Moldflon will not crack, crack or peel off, which may occur with traditional PTFE. For Robert Winters, the president of Cath-Tip, the results of using Moldflon are “much better than traditional PTFE”, and Joe Bolinger, Wang's sales engineering account manager, highly praised the flow characteristics of Moldflon PTFE, which are “in the lower part of the market”. Observed at “temperature” at the same time, it requires a shorter process characterization time compared to other PTFE materials. "
Earlier this year, Raumedic announced that it would build its first manufacturing plant outside of Germany in Mills River, North Carolina. For more information on the company's entry into the US market, please refer to the article "Raumedic brings German plastics expertise to'the world's largest and most innovative medical market'".
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