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News Item - Rising to the challenges of precision laser processing for medical device components
The production of medical device components demands precision, quality, repeatability and traceability at each and every stage of manufacture. With many of the components and therefore processes micro in nature, adhering to these stringent criteria becomes even more challenging. Although laser micro cutting, welding and laser marking have been core medical product processes for some time, ongoing developments in the materials used, combined with greater demands on product finish and quality, has necessitated the development of new and innovative solutions for these applications. Rising to these challenges, with a combination of unrivalled application experience and progressive product development, Rofin-Baasel offers a range of flexible all-in-one solutions for medical component manufacture.
StarCut Tube Femto produces high precision edge quality on bio-absorbable polymers
Bio-absorbable stents are at the heart of numerous research and development activities. The use of bio-absorbable polymers such as polylactic acid and polyglycolic acid has suffered however due to their low melting points, making them very difficult to machine with traditional cutting lasers. In addition, the heat affected zone generated by the cutting process resulted in unacceptable cut quality. By comparison, machining these materials using femtosecond lasers produces excellent results on vascular stents, with perfect high-precision edge quality. Manufacturing medical devices such as stents from tube stock typically relies on laser cutting with pulse widths in the μs-scale. Even with the optimum setup the cutting process is not completely free from burrs and recast inside the tube. This often means time consuming post-processing using acid cleaning and electro-polishing on stainless steel and CoCr components. The shape memory alloy nitinol can in certain instances also be prone to chemical and mechanical damage during these post-processing operations. With femtosecond lasers however, the only post-processing required is simple ultrasonic cleaning. This improves post-processing efficiency significantly, in particular with sensitive materials. Femtosecond lasers under certain operating conditions can process materials faster than energy can diffuse within the atomic lattice, therefore no heat is transferred to the surrounding material, which in turn eliminates any recast and burr. The StarCut Tube Femto integrates an innovative, compact all fiber based laser source with field-proven high reliability and long-term pulse stability - properties which are essential for industrial manufacturing with femtosecond lasers, but until now have been hard to find in ultra-fast laser sources. The StarCut Tube Femto mechanics have been adapted to the specific requirements for handling thin-walled, mechanically fragile semi-finished products. The new system complements the already successful StarCut Tube series. Several of these new systems are already installed and working at customer sites.
