Ian Bolland caught up with Heiko Haller, business development manager, medical from ZwickRoell, to explain the company’s offering to the medical device manufacturing sector ahead of Med-Tech Innovation Expo.
ZwickRoell will be showcasing its testing machinery that can help medical manufacturers test for quality components and materials.
A large part of the ZwickRoell medical product offering can be found in its ability to test the suitability of drug delivery devices.
Its therapy systems products include autoinjectors, auto injector spring simulation, insulin pens and pen injectors, prefilled syringes, testing on syringe systems, break resistance of injection needles, and more.
Also among its offering is the company’s Horizontal Testing machine. This, along with glide force testing, can be used for quality and properties testing on catheters.
Explaining the process, Haller said: “We simulate this in a water path. It’s like a bath and we heat it up to body temperature and we simulate the force that a doctor brings to a catheter when it’s being inserted.
“We simulate when the doctor clamps the catheter and pushes it into the body and comes to a position where he re-clamps it.”
Checking the force that the material brings is an important element, as Haller highlighted that lot of research and development companies to use materials to check the friction a material may possess.
The drug delivery portfolio also stretched to testing blister packaging – establishing how much force is required for a tablet to be removed for consumption.
Orthopaedics is another area where ZwickRoell’s machinery can affect the medical device market.
The machinery in the company’s portfolio allows it to test artificial hip joints, spinal implants, intervertebral body fusion devices, knee implants, bone plates and bone screws.
“Everything that you can imagine is used on a patient needs a quality test. And quality testing in this particular sector is so, so important.”
Haller acknowledged that if a product fails a test that it might not necessarily be the product itself, which is why there are daily checks on the ZwickRoell machinery to ensure everything is up to standard.
With ZwickRoell serving many markets as well as medical devices, Haller commented where he thinks the market is at for medical device testing.
“Standards are rising, the requirements for testing is rising, and quality is more and more important.
“If an implant breaks and a silicone runs out, for example, this is a quality issue and. It can take a life at the end. We have this machine to avoid such fails, which can influence the health of the patient.”