Mediplas Day 1: Hundreds of Medical Plastics Bods Under One Roof
As the first day of the UK's only dedicated medical plastics trade show drew to a close last night, Sam Anson pulls together the highlights of the day from the show floor.
The day started with an interview with Chris Dyke, connectivity director for Medilink West Midlands and key note speaker for the first session of the free conference. In the interview, published here, Chris emphasised the importance of ISO13485 for medical manufacturers and called for there to be more incentive for UK manufacturers to make the required investments to upgrade their certification to ISO 13485.
Next up was Richard Gane, project manager at Swiss mould maker Kebo. Richard explained to Sam that in injection moulding his medical customers want as much efficiency as possible, and as such are turning to Kebo thanks to their inhouse developed hot runner system. He explained that cold sprues are not compatible with high end medical moulding.
Just next to the Kebo stand was Intertronics, a UK distributor of adhesive and fluid dispensing systems. Peter Swansea explained how the demonstration equipment from Fisnar robotically controls a 200 x 200 mm area for high accuracy dispensing.
Materials played a very strong role at the first day of Mediplas and will be sure to take centre stage again on day two. There were over ten materials suppliers exhibiting at the show while a good number of conference papers looked at the most innovative polymer technologies around in the medical sector.
Medical Plastics News was lucky enough to speak with Derek Watts from newly rebranded materials distributor Distrupol. Derek spoke about why long term supply agreements for drug delivery devices are important for his customers and how his company can offer supply guarantees on Ineos products for up to two years.
Extending the theme of materials, but looking more in depth at materials analysis, operations manager of Germany's materials characterisation equipment supplier Netzsch Peter Davies, gave us a short explanation of how his differential scanning calorimeter works to analyse the thermal properties of a thermoplastic material.
The afternoon progressed with interviews from two injection moulding machine makers — Boy and KraussMaffei.
Peter Ing demonstrated a Boy XS 10 tonne micro moulding machine producing small osteoperosis surgical implants. He commented on the buoyoncy of the UK medical plastics sector.
And for the finale, we spoke to one of the many Germans who had come over to visit the show. Thomas Hoerl from KraussMaffei in Munich told me about how KraussMaffei has adapted to some key trends in medical plastics. He explained how customers are looking for improved productivity with more cavities in multicavitiy moulds requiring larger platens than before. He also explained that multi shot moulding and automation are playing important roles.
All of these interviews are available on the Medical Plastics News You Tube Channel