Stories
R&D: Sensors/Data Acquisition
As advances in wearable devices push the amount of information they can provide consumers, sensors increasingly must conform to the contours of the body. One approach applies the...
R&D: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Briefs: Medical
Features: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Even the simplest medical cable assembly projects contain numerous engineering considerations. And among the most complex applications, the quantity of requirements can...
R&D: Medical
Engineers have developed a thin, lightweight, rubber-like adhesive film that can stick to highly deformable regions of the body, such as the knee and elbow, and maintain its hold even after 100...
Applications: Manufacturing & Prototyping
High-speed machining is typically used in medical equipment manufacturing where machinists often work with exotic alloys and harder metals like titanium.
Features: Medical
For patients, high-quality orthopedic components mean that implants can be kept for as long as possible, reducing or even eliminating the need for further procedures down the road. In...
Technology Leaders: Tubing & Extrusion
Over the past five years, technological advances have enabled product applications for microextrusion to penetrate into the medical OEM arena. Simply speaking, micro now...
Features: Medical
In order to stay competitive in today’s medical device marketplace, it is imperative that companies continually invest in the latest technologies to ensure that they...
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Machinists know that when it comes to precision machining, the importance of a toolholder cannot be overstated. The quality of the toolholder plays an even greater role when precision...
Features: Medical
They are vitally important, make therapy possible, and they have become an integral part in hospitals or home-care settings: medication and feeding pumps supply patients with essential...
Features: Manufacturing & Prototyping
The recent emergence of specially designed five-axis grinding machines can now meet the highest expectations of accuracy and machine dynamics within the special demands of...
Features: Medical
Stents and hypodermic tubes (hypotubes) are used in countless applications, and the demand is growing rapidly in response to the continued demand for stent applications and...
Features: Photonics/Optics
There are some key, fundamental considerations when manufacturing optical components: designing molded optical parts, designing and building the molds to...
Features: Medical
The manufacture of medical devices involves some of the most sophisticated machining processes found in industry today. From a machining perspective, the machine tools that make up...
Features: Medical
The manufacturing of medical components must meet standards of accuracy, reliability, quality, and traceability that equal...
Features: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Fasteners and threaded parts are among the many small, precision-machined components found in medical devices. Because threaded parts can play a critical role in the...
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
While manufacturers bemoan a lack of skilled potential employees, and returning veterans experience frustration at being able to find employment, one organization— Workshop for...
Technology Leaders: Tubing & Extrusion
Bioresorbable stent scaffolds are balloon-expandable and have been used to replace metallic stents to treat the narrowing of arteries and airway passages. Like traditional metallic scaffolds,...
R&D: Medical
Kirigami-Inspired Method Builds 'Pop-Up' 3D Structures
A new assembly method based on an ancient Japanese paper art instantly transforms 2D structures into complex 3D shapes. The results, reported by a Northwestern University and University of Illinois research team, could be useful in tissue engineering and microelectromechanical systems.
R&D: Robotics, Automation & Control
Tiny Mechanical Wrist Supports Needlescopic Surgeries
A tiny mechanical wrist from a team of engineers and doctors at Vanderbilt University’s Medical Engineering and Discovery Laboratory will be used on needle-sized surgical robots. The wrist is less than 1/16th of an inch (2 mm) thick.
Briefs: Medical
Kirigami, the Japanese art of folding and paper cutting, has inspired a team of engineers at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, to create...
Features: Medical
Silicone materials have been around for more than 70 years and since the 1960s have played an important and evolving part in products designed for the medical field. Since that...
Features: Medical
In medical product design, proper, robust functionality is paramount. The product simply has to work. In this market, is aesthetic design of any importance? And if so, how can designers...
Briefs: Software
On April 10, NASA released more than 1,000 codes in a new online software catalog. Organized into 15 broad categories, the new catalog offers a wide variety of applications for use by...
Briefs: Materials
Over the past fifty years, thin wall small diameter precision metal tubing has undergone quite a transformation. From its use in the mid-1960s as pointers for analog...
Applications: Medical
Producing basic features by stamping, and then incorporating more critical features by computer numerical control (CNC) machining can result in a much lower cost part than...
Features: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Fine thin metal laser cutting is an ideal technology for the specialized cutting requirements found in the manufacturing of medical tube tools and...
Mission Accomplished: Medical
An Albuquerque physician teamed with a Sandia National Laboratories engineer to improve the design of doctors' trauma shears so emergency personnel can get to the injuries...
Top Stories
INSIDER: Materials
3D Printed Hydrogel Dressings Speed and Improve Healing
INSIDER: Electronics & Computers
Soft, Ultrathin Photonic Material Cools Wearable Electronic Devices
INSIDER: Medical
Breaking Barriers in Drug Delivery with Better Lipid Nanoparticles
Quiz: Wearables
Medical Technology on the PGA Tour
INSIDER: Connectivity
Wearable Ultrasound Patch Goes Completely Cable-Free
Features: Materials
Ask the Expert
Ralph Bright on the Power of Power Cords
Understanding power system components and how to connect them correctly is critical to meeting regulatory requirements and designing successful electrical products for worldwide markets. Interpower’s Ralph Bright defines these requirements and explains how to know which cord to select for your application.
Webcasts
Webinars: Medical
Scan-Based and Project Design for Medical
Podcasts: Medical
Here's an Idea: Medtech’s New Normal
Podcasts: Medical
Here's an Idea: A Plant-Based Gel That Saves Lives
Webinars: Electronics & Computers
Adaptable Healthcare Solutions Designed for Safety and Security
Podcasts: AR/AI
Webinars: Wearables
Inside Story
Rapid Precision Prototyping Program Speeds Medtech Product Development
Rapid prototyping technologies play an important role in supporting new product development (NPD) by companies that are working to bring novel and innovative products to market. But in advanced industries where products often make use of multiple technologies, and where meeting a part’s exacting tolerances is essential, speed without precision is rarely enough. In such advanced manufacturing—including the medical device and surgical robotics industries — the ability to produce high-precision prototypes early in the development cycle can be critical for meeting design expectations and bringing finished products to market efficiently.