How rapid prototyping can help healthcare providers solve biggest pain points

According to FTI Consulting, health care providers are still feeling a significant impact of medical device supply chain woes since the pandemic, resulting in delayed and cancelled elective surgeries, long lead times and higher costs. As the health care industry navigates market challenges, medical technology manufacturers and engineers are called upon to produce fast and precise solutions that help protect public health and spur medical technology innovation.

Specialty manufacturers do this by delivering precision metal components to health care leaders with expertise, reliability and quality. These solutions were crucial during the Covid-19 pandemic, where for example, medical technology manufacturers responded to critical needs from customers and produced ventilator and diagnostic parts rapidly and reliably.

In this article, we will highlight how the use of a manufacturing process called rapid prototyping can be a model solution for quickly producing precise, life-saving innovation helping health care providers solve their biggest pain points.

Using photochemical etching for rapid prototyping and its advantages
With health care’s rapid evolution and the need for quickly manufactured, reliable precision parts, industry leaders depend on specialty manufacturers to resolve challenges as they emerge. Rapid prototyping should be a key approach in meeting this demand.

Rapid prototyping is the fast fabrication of a physical part, model or assembly. The creation of the part, model or assembly is completed using numerous processes such as additive manufacturing, laser cutting or chemical etching (TWI Global). In a medical setting, specialty chemical etching manufacturers etch various components for devices that diagnose, treat and repair life-threatening issues quicker and more efficiently.

While there are several ways to practice rapid prototyping, from high-speed machining to casting, photochemical etching has proven to be most effective for its high precision, quick turn production.

Advantages of using photochemical etching for rapid prototyping include:
Design flexibility with digital tooling
Rapid prototyping through chemical etching allows for the creation of detailed, intricate parts from nearly any metal type, including exotic metals like titanium. As a specialty manufacturer, we rely on this flexibility to quickly modify part design without increasing costs of the overall manufacturing process. We provide in-house, value-added services that convert products from design conception to production.

Quick turnaround and shorter lead times
The process of rapid prototyping through chemical etching is automated. Because tooling molds or physical patterns are not required, prototype parts can be created in hours when compared with other available technologies, which largely results in multiple days’ worth of manufacturing.

Reduced costs and waste
Unlike other metal part fabrication methods that use mechanical force (stamping), abrasive cutting (CNC machining), and heat (laser cutting), photochemical etching is a stress-free process and uses proprietary substrates to etch the unprotected parts of a metal surface. This limits hard tooling needs and the risk of material loss from trauma.

Chemical etching creates a design or image formed to a project’s specifications, saving on both costs and waste. This advantage is significant for the function of many industrial components that rely on multiple rounds of research and development at low quantities. Rapid prototyping also results in savings for the customer as manufacturers put as many parts onto a single sheet of metal as possible at no additional cost.

Prototyping in action
Medical technology manufacturers are putting these processes into practice by spearheading rapid prototyping to generate biomedical solutions that actively protect patient health and help support medical technology innovation.

One way we’ve used rapid prototyping to protect the public is by developing stainless steel screens which benefit organizations producing biotech drugs. The screen is used to filter out plastic particles that are used to grow cells more effectively, as opposed to fabric mesh. Rapid prototyping’s speed and precision allows manufacturers to quickly produce various iterations, leading it to receive approval for end-use application sooner.

We also used rapid prototyping to produce electrodes from beryllium copper for ablation devices. These quick turn services not only give health care organizations the solutions they need to continue operations but contribute to life-saving care that protects everyday people. Over 540,000 patients are served with ablation therapy worldwide to address irregular heart activity, and rapid prototyping services are a key component to ensuring patients receive the care they need.

Rapid prototyping plays a vital role in solving scheduling problems, process inefficiencies, performance issues and cost overruns, and photochemical etching accelerates those benefits even further. By using critical innovation through prototyping, specialty manufacturers like Fotofab can solve health care industry challenges with precision and adaptability. These solutions not only result in high-volume production but allow for speed and repeatability to reach the users that need it most.

As medical technology providers and specialty manufacturers look to solutions that will generate reliable, quick turn preventative care, they should consider how to integrate rapid prototyping into their model. Medical Product Outsourcing