Mollart revolutionises titanium trauma products
1 min read
Through the Chessington-based operation of Mollart Engineering the medical industry can obtain a fully developed deep hole gun drilling system for creating the holes in trauma nails.
In response to the in-vogue growth in demand for the use of surgical grade titanium in preference to 316 stainless steel for trauma related components, Mollart Engineering, in conjunction with its tooling partner Botek and a specialist supplier of cannulated tube to the medical industry, has developed a drilling process for producing holes in the difficult to machine material that creates a totally new series of options for component supply.
Components can also be produced complete within the subcontract machining service provided by Mollart or by obtaining precision machined thin-wall drawn tubing from the material supplier. In this form it has the bore finished to size by a Mollart gun drill and is able to meet the stringent geometric tolerances and surface finish requirements demanded by the industry.
For trauma components depth-to-diameter ratios of 40:1 are common as parts such as femur and tibia nails can require through holes to be produced in excess of 400 mm in depth.
The latest development of the gun drilling process allows a component such as a tibia or femur nail to be drilled in a single pass to 18 mm diameter with a penetration rate of 12 mm per min. Such is the technology that a gun drill will maintain a concentricity and straightness within 0.015 mm TIR over a depth of 400 mm. Other long holes for trauma components as small as 6 mm can be successfully drilled in 13 mm diameter titanium with a thin 3.5 mm wall thickness. Meanwhile, the same technology can now be applied to stainless steel bone screw production requiring holes 2 mm diameter and 40 to 120 mm deep.
