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Every day around the world in hospitals and clinics, research laboratories, and universities, numerous plastic products are used for medical parts, devices, appliances, and support equipment. The variety of applications for injection-molded devices is almost limitless.
This is due to the fact that plastic injection molding is perfect for making high volumes of identical, close-tolerance medical products. These injection molded medical devices include both solid components as well as hollow and semi-hollow enclosures and cases.
And not only is injection molding versatile, but also many plastic resins have demonstrated their utility and quality in a variety of medical products and devices that have already received regulatory approval. That means it will be relatively easier to get certification for new medical products using the same raw materials.
To learn more about why injection molding may be right for you, here are the top 4 reasons to consider plastic injection molding for making medical devices.
1. Medical Grade Process Control and Reliability
The history of plastic injection molding goes back almost 100 years. That means the process of injection molding has been continuously refined and improved to the point where the process is very stable and reliable. Injection molding design and engineering are used to create only the highest quality devices. There is advanced modeling software available that takes much of the guesswork out of tool design. And, with modern digital controls on plastic injection molding machines, the process parameters can be quickly tuned for optimal performance and to reduce the production lead time of injection molded medical devices to a minimum. This will also help to reduce the cost of your medical devices.
2. Medical Device Injection Molding Can Produce Devices in High Volumes
All injection molding projects, including medical ones, first start with an injection molding tool and die. To make a complex shape might require making an equally complex mold tool, so there is an initial product design and development investment that needs to be considered before a single medical device is made.
But once the tool is approved it’s possible to make hundreds of thousands of duplicate medical parts in plastic very quickly and economically. In fact, larger production volumes tend to recoup the tooling cost over time because of lower price-per-part. That’s why injection molding is perfect for rather generic devices like containers, tubes, or disposable single-use medical products like syringes. Injection molding offers solutions for all of your medical device needs.
3. Injection Molding Provides Ideal Solutions for Enclosures
Injection molding is especially useful when manufacturing cases and enclosures. It’s technically possible to use some other process to make a box, such as CNC machining or vacuum casting, and sometimes there are good reasons for doing so. But those other production methods would be much slower, consume more raw materials, and would result in a relatively high manufacturing cost per part. That is why a different production process would make sense only for low-volume or custom jobs when you don’t want to invest in a tool. Medical device injection molding has a faster production time, and a lower cost per part, and uses medical-grade plastics that make it ideal for cases and enclosures.
Enclosures come in all shapes and sizes. Some are just simple components like tool holding trays, pill dispensers, or housings for sensors. Large plastic housings are especially beneficial for sophisticated medical equipment. Not only is plastic lightweight, durable, and less expensive than alternative materials, but it also will not interfere with electromagnetic energy such as would be used in CAT scans, MRIs, and X-rays. And some plastic resins are also unaffected by radiation.
4. Plastic Injection Molding Provides Versatility for Medical Products
There are thousands of plastic resins to choose from for manufacturing that is easily available on the commercial market. And luckily many of these resins are suitable for medical devices. These resins have mechanical and chemical properties which are well understood so it’s easy to choose the one that’s most appropriate for its end use and environment. There are resins that are heat stable, chemically resistant, strong, lightweight, biodegradable, and biocompatible. Plastic is increasingly popular when used for prosthetics, replacement joints, or other medical products that will be in permanent contact with the body. With such a wide variety of plastic available for injection molding, you can find the best fit for your medical device.
If you need medical devices, injection molding is likely a good fit for you. Medical injection molding is a low-cost process using quality materials that will provide the devices that you need.
Want to learn more about injection molding for medical devices?
Star Rapid is fully certified to the quality management system of ISO 13485 for medical devices. When you’re ready to start your next medical product, contact us for a free design for manufacturing review and quotation. We can ensure you use the right materials and the right process that best suits your medical device needs.
