Our customer SOCINSER needs to manufacture a set of instruments for a new type of surgery, following the requirements of the surgeon who has developed a new technique. A first prototype set has already been manufactured by traditional means (milling, lathing and welding) which has allowed the first series of field tests to be performed. But this can be further improved.

Aims:

• Producing a set of surgical instruments for an innovative type of surgery in less time, at lower cost, and with improved functionality.

Strategies:

• Meetings are held between SOCINSER Engineering Team and the RM team from PRODINTEC, to carry out an in depth study of the functionalities involved, part by part and as a whole, developing the best manufacturing strategy in each case. In this way a new synergic design is produced that combines and takes advantage of the best of each technology: milling, lathing, welding and RM, optimizing production costs and generating new advantages at the same time.
• For example, all parts with a long and hollow stem used to be built by welding the stem to a drilled, press-curved plate; now they are built as a single piece. The biggest part is now partially hollow and is hence lighter. The chances of successfully lathing such long, thin-walled parts are very low, but this problem has been solved with RM

Results:

A second set was built according to this new design, and was tested by the surgeon, who acknowledged the benefits of the new set, such as lightness, toothed structures, finish, etc. Besides this and thanks to the special property of very high elongation at break of the EOS SS17-4 stainless steel (up to 28% compared to a standard 5%) certain surgical risks can be avoided

Related files:

• Socinser Presentation