#10 - Optimizing extrusion tooling
Top articles from 2020: Guill Tool & Engineering’s President Glen Guillemette explains how tooling maintenance improves efficiency, enhances quality, and boosts overall productivity for medical tubing.
multi-lumen and multi-layer medical tubing. However, tool misalignment or maintenance issues can produce exaggerated impacts on the final product.
Equipment maintenance
Improperly maintained equipment can waste 10% to 20% of the material, which can run from 50% to 90% of product cost, since in extrusion processes materials costs are typically higher than labor costs. Tooling suppliers go to great lengths to maintain tips and dies to a determined specification, ensuring perfect concentricity and alignment. Proper maintenance keeps it that way.
OMIC R&D begins sponsored research project in robotics for SMW-AUTOBLOK
Jordan Meader, a robotics solution researcher at OMIC R&D, will be the principal investigator on the project.
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SMW-AUTOBLOK Corporation, a worldwide manufacturer of workholding for turning and grinding machine tools based in Wheeling, Illinois. Jordan Meader, a robotics solution researcher at OMIC R&D, will be the principal investigator on the project.
OMIC R&D will conduct research in advanced and automated connection interfaces for robotic end effectors in collaboration with engineers from SMW-AUTOBLOK. The project, scheduled to take place over the next 12 months, will create a unique robotics connection interface that is expected to become available in SMW-AUTOBLOK’s catalog as an enhancement to small and medium shops integrating robotics. This ultimately aids in time loss associated with human interaction that often leads to damaged cables and connectors.
#9 - 6 common safety principles to make medical devices safe
Top articles from 2020: A look at common safety strategies used by medical device designers and manufacturers.
The evolution of medical device safety has been in motion since 1968 when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) first became responsible for medical device regulation. In the last three decades, technology-powered medical devices have exploded into clinical practice with a persistent need to evolve and become safer for a more diverse and less technically sophisticated range of users. As medical device technology matures and the technology becomes more capable, it also becomes more complex,