{pixabay|100|campaign} Medical technology continues to find new ways to treat old illnesses. Every year, healthcare professionals are able to cure and manage diseases that were once thought incurable. With new and more precise diagnostic equipment, doctors are able to make accurate, early diagnosis.

One major part of these advances in the medical field are due in part to breakthroughs in tooling components and industrial equipment. The ability to design and manufacture more complicated products allows for many of these medical breakthroughs to occur. Industrial equipment has been playing a major role in transforming healthcare. Each refinement in the ability to meet stricter tolerances, manufacture on a smaller size scale, and work with exotic materials creates a new tool for doctors to treat diseases.

Meeting The Healthcare Industry’s Stringent Guidelines With Digital Design

One of the largest hurdles in designing industrial equipment for the healthcare industry is meeting their strict requirements. Tolerances for most items used in healthcare are extremely tight and only allow deviations on the scale of micrometers, or the thickness of a human hair.

Digital design, CAD drawings, and computer numerical control manufacturing (CNC) devices have helped designers and engineers meet those requirements consistently. CAD drawings are used as a blueprint to run the computer numerical control devices that fabricate end products. Design with CAD drawings enables the high degree of accuracy within digital programs to be translated into reality through the CNC devices. High precision tooling components complete the package, allowing the manufacturing system to carry out the CAD drawing’s instructions.

Additionally, digital design is much more economical and effective than standard prototyping. CAD drawings allow engineers to test out their ideas in a virtual environment without having to rely on manufacturing prototypes at every step of the design process. The virtual design can be analyzed, tested, and vetted before having to spend the time and resources on a prototype. Ultimately, these advantages streamline the entire process from design to implementation, allowing advances to be quickly realized at a lower cost.

Case Study: How Advanced Tooling Components Enable Better Medical Implants

Medical implants are an ideal example of the rigorous demands that the medical profession puts on any industrial equipment that it utilizes. Implants have to be as near to perfect as possible; once they are placed within a patient there is no opportunity to make adjustments. Medical implants must be fabricated correctly with the highest confidence level in every measurement and specification.

The most precise tooling components available to designers and engineers are required to meet those specifications. Everything from tooling balls to work stops and jigs and fixtures have to meet design tolerances. Workholding devices in particular must provide a steady and stable hold in order for the machining process to run on target.

Advances in material science and the introduction of new materials in the manufacturing process carries over into medical breakthroughs. New materials like 316LVM stainless steel are biocompatible while meeting tensile strength requirements. Other exotic materials like cobalt chromium and titanium are employed in nearly every medical implant, even in something as simple as a surgical screw. In order to work these materials, tooling components should be able to cut, draw, cast, and perform any number of machining operations on these heavy duty materials.

Robotic Devices In Healthcare

When it comes to the latest breakthroughs for the medical profession, the use of robotics in industrial equipment are some of the most amazing. Hospitals now have access to robotic diagnostic tools that can perform surgical procedures without human direction or by remote control. For example, robotic biopsy modules can be used be a technician or nurse to take tissue samples, freeing up the precious time of the hospital’s surgeons. This type of new technology is the kind of breakthrough that will continue to reshape how the medical profession treats patients while lowering the financial burden on everyone.

In order to create these robotic tools, the highest level of precision and miniaturization is required. Robotic biopsy machines utilize micro motors and intricate parts that require the most precise tooling components in order to be manufactured successfully.

Overall, ever advancement in industrial equipment and technology enables another breakthrough in the medical profession. With every new technology comes another opportunity to adapt and advance to fulfill another medical need or improve upon old procedures. Ultimately, it will be technology that advances healthcare and enables new treatments at lower costs with greater patient accessibility.

Greg Palmer is an author for Reid Supply, an industrial distribution company with a 60 year history supplying customers in all 50 states and over 40 countries with industrial equipment and tooling components.

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