Uniweb – a leading partner in Healthcare and Life Sciences of world-class innovative digital solutions that improve quality of life for their patients. Uniweb collects and processes clinical data in a regulatory and compliant way with the use of EDC solutions, Clinical Data Management, ePRO and registries systems. The company also develops its own healthcare apps and devices.
Even though Uniweb’s main focus is in IT sector, this time, company has stepped into the world of hardware. Together with a consortium of Radboudumc university and ZGT Academy the team of engineers and medical students develops a medical device to measure the strength of a grip of elderly people.
Low-volume injection molding for clinical tests
Much research and many prototypes has been developed before Uniweb first contacted our company. It was instantly clear that the team has already put much effort in this project as the RFQ received was very informative and straight to the point. Despite that, 3D printing technology is very different from injection molding and this meant that some of the printed prototypes had to be optimised for low-volume injection molding. We had to know the critical dimensions that must remain the same in order to not disrupt the whole assembly and we successfully did that.
The device itself had many plastic components which were perfect for our micromolding technology in respect of a lead time and costs of tooling. This is the main reason why we have received the contract from the client. However, because of the confidentiality issues we cannot disclose all of the information.
The elastomer tube
The first component that we had to mould was a tube with 2 outlets and 1 inlet. Not surprisingly, it was the most difficult too. To shape out all of this tubing we had to use 3 sliders with moving pins which had to be precision machined to enclose the whole internal channelling system. We used aluminium for the mold core and cavity and steel for the precision inserts.
We delivered the project in 3 weeks with successful tube samples and were confirmed to continue with the next device components. We are proud that we can share our knowledge and contribute to the development of geriatric devices for elderly people.
Soon be updated...