Tooling design can be critical to achieving commercialization goals. Tool design has a direct impact on product cosmetics, cost and scalability. Sequential injection molding offers both cosmetic and throughput benefits, but in its traditional form has required a bulky mold and use of larger tonnage machines to accommodate the external...
From a medical device manufacturer's standpoint, tooling is often the least focused upon element in a product development process. Yet, tool design often has significant impact on product quality and cost; production scalability; and on-time delivery. A contract manufacturer's ability to educate its customers on tooling options and trade-offs associated...
One of the key benefits of using a contract manufacturer for both design and manufacturing is the ability to work with a product design team that is experienced with manufacturing. This can eliminate design errors that could otherwise increase tooling costs and secondary processing costs. However, this option can also...
Outsourcing single use medical device manufacturing with the right supplier can add expertise, cut development time and lower total costs while maintaining superior quality. The question becomes: “what capabilities should that supplier have in-house vs. manage through third parties?” Many suppliers have one or two key manufacturing competencies and advertise...
A key challenge when developing new medical single use products is optimizing automation strategy as volumes grow. Forefront Medical Technology, a specialty contract manufacturer with a focus in disposable diagnostic, drug delivery systems and medical device systems, routinely helps its customers commercialize new products by providing a scalable solution designed...
Overview One of the challenges of designing and manufacturing medical devices is the fact that choices made in the product development effort can have significant impact on regulatory approval lead-time, tooling complexity and cost, and production capabilities. When those choices are made by a cross functional team that reviews potential tradeoffs...
Overview The unfortunate truth about manufacturing offshore is that unit cost is rarely reflective of total cost. Nor is every low cost country (LCC) contract manufacturer equally equipped to provide the support required by highly regulated medical product design and manufacturing. A strategy based on having your team train or continually...
Introduction It’s no secret that medical devices are getting smaller. Implants, tubing and drug delivery systems now often require injection molders capable of fabricating parts at a micro level. The smaller the part; the more complex the injection molding process since material behaves differently in smaller shot sizes. Forefront Medical Technology,...
Overview Metal parts have been traditionally used for endoscopes because machined metal parts ensure a tight seal at joints in the device. However, use of metal components is costly and drives a need for the product to be sterilized and reused in order to make cost effective. Since endoscopy is an...
Overview To some, tooling may appear to be simply one more non-recurring engineering (NRE) cost in a product development process. However, in medical disposables manufacturing, it is also the single most important item in ensuring that quality and cost objectives are met. The quality of the tooling design and fabrication process...
