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Medical Device Manufacturer Boosts Efficiency with Servo Ultrasonic Welding

Authors:

Shivani Singh

Shivani Singh Marketing Manager

Medical Device Manufacturer Boosts Efficiency with Servo Ultrasonic Welding

Dukane, a leader in ultrasonic welding equipment manufacturer, help a Medical Device company specialized in developing optimized solutions for organ, tissue and cell preservation and perfusion to support life-saving transplantations, is utilizing a servo ultrasonic welding system to assemble tiny caps on disposable sensors. These polycarbonate disposable sensors monitor pH and gas in the artificial blood during ex vivo assessment and evaluation. Three thin medicated films are placed in the tiny caps. These assemblies are then ultrasonically welded to produce hermetically sealed devices.

The company formerly used pneumatic ultrasonic welding technology to assemble the cap but faced multiple challenges including the weld part dimension being less than a quarter of an inch (0.635 cm).


Disposable Sensor-Medical Device
Tiny caps welded on the Disposable Sensor

With the pneumatic ultrasonic welder, the average scrap rate was 50% and at times soared to 90%. Hardik Pathak, Dukane’s Project Engineer, explains, “Traditional pneumatic presses do not have the precise control needed for some applications. As soon as the material melts, the thruster traverses down with the already built pressure (weld pressure) in the equipment. This additional, unnecessary force applied caused deflection in the parts resulting in inconsistent welding and solidification. Therefore, Dukane recommended a 40 kHz iQ Servo driven Ultrasonic Welding system with patented Melt-Match® technology.” Hardik adds, “A key advantage in using a servo welder for this application is the limited deflection applied during assembly welding. This is done in two ways:

  • The Dukane servo-welder has the ability to precisely control weld speed during the welding phase.
  • The servo-welder initiates plastic part collapse only when a melt has been detected. Melt-Detect™ an important feature of Dukane’s patented Melt-Match® technology allows the equipment to intelligently detect melt prior to collapse.

These key attributes allow a clean, refined method for welding plastics and prevent part deflection at the most critical stage."


iQ Servo Ultrasonic Welder with patented Melt Match
iQ Servo Ultrasonic Welder (40 kHz)

The Medical company achieved 0% scrap rate after implementing the Servo controlled Ultrasonic Welder. In addition, they reduced their quality inspection from 100% to 10%. Since the former weld process produced inconsistent results, it required vacuum leak testing on each of their Disposable Sensors to assure there was a hermetic seal. By utilizing Dukane’s servo ultrasonic welder in this application, it gave them the confidence to produce repeatable and reliable parts. This allowed them to revert to just 10% product testing time, and thus reduced production costs and assured superior quality for their customers in this critical application.

Learn more about the iQ Servo Ultrasonic Systems.