Medical device manufacturers are asking suppliers to improve their productivity for implant prototypes by manufacturing directly from bar stock, instead of near net shape forged work pieces. This allows the medical device company to avoid the forge tooling costs for low-volume items as well as products that fail to take off even after extensive test marketing. One supplier to the industry, Thortex, Inc., (Portland, Oregon) is using this trend to its advantage.
Thortex has approximately 115 people working 16 hours a day, six days a week to manufacture implants (primarily hips, femoral and tibia knee components and shoulder products) for a number of international leaders in the orthopaedic products field. The company has 25 advanced CNC machines including horizontal and vertical 5-axis mills, Y-axis lathes, and Swiss turning machines. To insure that this equipment produces up to its full potential, Thortex has 6 seats of Mastercam X that are foccupied during about 85% of the company’s 96-hour workweek.
Recently, many of the CNC programmers have been making use of the advanced surfacing capabilities of Mastercam X to keep pace with a surge of prototype implants. Keri Smith, Engineering Manager for Thortex said “Our equipment allows us to make complete 3D-modelled prototype implants straight from a raw piece of titanium bar stock, typically with just one set-up.”
Mastercam’s verify function labels the 3D part with colors to provide a fast visual confirmation that all of the areas of the part have been roughed and finished completely and appropriately. This has helped the company reduce scrap rates for titanium, which costs more than $50 a pound. Then the program can be posted to the machine tool with minor adjustments, if any, made on the fly. Smith believes that these advanced capabilities, coupled with their ease of use, have allowed Thortex to improve CNC manufacturing productivity by about 15%.
Being able to turn work around quickly and produce it efficiently has resulted in more business for Thortex. For example, Smith says, “One of our customers brought in seven different models. They were different types of stems in different sizes. They needed the parts in a little over a month. We were able to provide them with all of those pieces-- five of each size-- in about three weeks’ time from placing the P.O. It worked out so well for us that they have since come back and placed a follow up order for another 160 pieces.”
During the first six months of 2007, Thortex was able to use its advanced CAM programming capabilities to create 100 new parts for its medical device customers. This expertise has also been instrumental in attracting numerous projects from the aerospace industry as well. |