Laser Micromachining Plays an Important Role in Medical Device

Laser Micromachining is one of the most precise processes used in the production of medical devices. Lasers may be the sole way to create delicate details, particularly in thin or sensitive materials. Lasers can cut micron-sized features rapidly and accurately with sub-micron tolerances, lowering or eliminating additional finishing operations, saving cycle times, and speeding up time to market.

Lasers are increasingly becoming the preferred technology for Micromachining small and/or sophisticated parts and products for medical devices, in nearly any shape or pattern, due to these advantages. Medical device firms collaborate with Spectrum Plastics Group on cutting-edge product designs that require microscopic characteristics that are best achieved through laser machining, such as catheters, medical balloons, and devices for neurovascular, cardiovascular, and diagnostic procedures.

Polymers can manufacture features as small as 10 microns wide with tolerances as tight as 1-2 microns. Polymers are the most common material used in medical equipment. Mechanically strong, chemically inert, and insulatively superb, these materials are ideal. Polymers can be extruded, injection moulded, or additively made to exhibit precise physical and chemical qualities, improving biocompatibility and performance. Polycarbonate, polyurethanes, ABS, FEP, polyamides, polyimides, PEEK, PTFE, and acrylics are just a few of the thermoplastic and thermoset polymer materials that can be laser treated with high precision.

As goods become smaller and more sophisticated, our engineers must use their technical abilities, material knowledge, and experience to develop procedures that can produce these tiny, high-precision characteristics that improve product functioning and, as a result, improve or save patient’s lives. At the micrometre level, lasers can be controlled to ablate or “vaporise” material from surfaces. Ablation removes layers of substrate or coating from the surface of manufactured items selectively, with little or no thermal or structural consequences for the surrounding material.