3D printing can play a key role in enabling a more iterative product development process. Instead of waiting weeks to tool and fabricate each new prototype, engineers can create new prototypes in days and at significantly lower cost. Now, new technologies allow 3D printing to work with unprecedented precision, enabling consistent 3D-printed prototypes at a smaller scale than was ever possible in the past. For industries like medical technology which depend on components with tolerances measured in the nanometers, this development is truly a game changer.

In this blog, we highlight a recent article that does a great job showing the potential of micro 3D printing for medical devices (and conclude by mentioning a few other applications).

Finding the Right Manufacturing Technology for a Precision Engineered Medical Device Component

We highly recommend this article from Digital Engineering 24/7, which provides a fascinating look at RNDR Medical’s (a successful medical device development group) engineering of a key component for their new single-use endourology scope. This component, a “distal tip” with just a .130” diameter, exhibited several engineering challenges, most notably:

• Multiple elements, including a camera chip and illumination source that needed to be precisely contained in the tip and sealed off from fluids

• Complex 3D geometry and tight tolerances

• Relatively low production volumes in the tens of thousands per year

RNDR engineers needed to find a prototyping technology that could accommodate all of these requirements without bogging down the product development process. The expense and lead times of traditional micro molding were a poor fit for early, iterative design phases. This restriction meant that, unless a better solution could be found, micro machining would need to be used for early development work, adding to the expense of adopting micro molding for final production.

In this case, Boston Micro Fabrication’s (BMF) Projection Micro Stereolithography (PµSL) micro 3D printing technology emerged as a powerful alternative. (Note: Empire Group refers to PµSL as “Micro DLP.”)

This micro-precision 3D printing technology could meet the tens of nanometer tolerances required for this component. The speed of the printers, coupled with avoiding the time for mold tooling, was an ideal fit for RNDR’s iterative design process. And, crucially, 3D printed components passed an extensive battery of testing which demonstrated it was a quality, cost-effective solution for not only prototyping, but full-scale production.

Key Strategic Advantages of Micro DLP 3D Printing

We wanted to highlight this article because our team is excited about the value that Micro DLP can bring to product development teams in a variety of different industries. At Empire Group, we have had the opportunity to see this value up close: we are one of the first service providers in the country to offer this technology via our partnership with BMF.

We invested in a BMF micro-precision 3D printer due to its ability to deliver unprecedented precision, accuracy and reliability for a micro-scale 3D printing process. In fact, it’s the only industrial 3D printing technology to reach 2μm printing resolution and +/- 10um tolerance at scale, matching or exceeding the quality of high-resolution micro injection molding or CNC at a significantly lower cost. BMF describes this technology as the “nexus” of two critical trends: 3D printing and miniaturization. And we agree.

By bringing the flexibility of 3D printing to a smaller scale than was ever possible before, Micro DLP will allow whole new industries to embrace rapid design iteration. By eliminating the weeks long lead times required for tooled or molded prototypes, we think it’s fair to say that Micro DLP unlocks the true value of prototyping for micro-engineered products.  And, as the story highlighted above shows, this technology can even be used for cost-effective final production runs for many designs.

BMF provides a concise video overview of the variety of applications for this technology here. For a deeper look at this technology, how it works, and why it’s an important part of our portfolio of 3D printing technologies, please see our article here. This article also explores valuable applications for micro 3D printing beyond medical devices, which include:

• Electronics, a classic industry full of ever smaller and more advanced parts (and an extreme pace of innovation)

• Precision manufacturing technologies are opening up new possibilities for “microfluidics,” with applications ranging from micro-propulsion to DNA chips

• Micro-mechanical devices: gears, motors, accelerometers and more, engineered at a smaller scale than was ever feasible or cost-effective in the past.

If you’re interested in learning more about this technology and what it can do, we encourage you to reach out to our team using the button below...