Irish moulder doubles Class 7 cleanroom capacity

Trend’s capital investment in the facility and additional cleanroom space and equipment, including a number of Sumitomo Demag 50-tonne IntElect machines, has enabled the company to boost process stability and achieve shorter production runs.

“The Irish and UK medical device sector is in a sustained growth phase,” said Trend’s manufacturing manager, Tom Kelly. “We are in the process of building another cleanroom, which when complete in the summer will expand our cleanroom manufacturing capacity by an additional 400 square meters. This is in response to the positive outlook for the sector and the increasing demand for high quality medical device components.”  

Trend’s site in Ireland is the company’s ‘Centre of Excellence’ for injection moulding, and provides tooling, project management, mouldflow and scientific injection moulding support to Trend Technologies sites globally.

Items moulded on site by Trend form part of Class I, IIA, IIB and III medical devices and include wound care products, diagnostic laboratory consumables, ventilator housings, surgical handles and stent delivery sub-components. Most of these are highly customised, so when making the investment in new cleanroom machinery Trend focused on sourcing equipment that would automate process stability and increase product integrity.

Although this isn’t Trend’s first foray into all-electric machines - it installed its first over a decade ago - senior processing engineer Trevor Thornton reports that the Sumitomo Demag’s IntElect machines are proving to be particularly flexible and reliable. The manufacturing site also has 32 Demag hydraulic machines.

“We knew that all-electric machines are more energy efficient and better for repeatability,” said Thornton. “Yet, given that we can mould larger products that weigh from one kilo right down to 0.025 grams, geometrical tolerances can be extremely tight.”

To accomplish the combination of precision and repeatability, Trend makes full use of the activeLock technology installed on each IntElect. “We use it on every product moulded and activeLock saves us an awful lot of bother when dealing with such small shot weights. It means we don’t have to run any decompression, which can draw air into the melt. This ultimately reduces rejects.” Since installation, Trevor states activeLock has reduced defects in the process significantly.

Putting into context how they see the cleanroom injection moulding contract market evolving, Tom said: “With the continuing implementation of Lean Manufacturing and continuous improvement, there’s been a definite shift towards shorter runs. As a result we are accommodating more moulds and faster changeovers. This is only made possible by complete equipment standardisation and the connectivity of the machines and associated ancillary equipment. This is an evolving and improving process that can only be made possible by working with aligned suppliers.”