MD Pro Technos Corp. of Kanazawa, Japan, adopted a ball slide and sliding shaft to achieve a high level of control and smooth movement in molds for medical components relating to surgical or life-sustaining procedures.
``Without this technology, it is not possible to make high-precision products like this one,'' said President Shinichi Shimada.
For the molding process, MD Pro Technos developed a finely controlled movement to remain within specification and also incorporated high-level control technology.
The project began in 2002 with a customer inquiry - actually a subtle challenge - about making a screw shape without any deformation, even at the edge. The undisclosed customer in Japan placed that order in November 2003, and MD Pro Technos created the first production mold in March 2004.
Successive customer-funded improvements in mold design and the production part have continued, and MD Pro Technos completed the latest technological iteration last year.
The partnership has dealt with issues such as changing to different screw shapes, altering the product geometry to fit within a confined space for other projects, looking for stronger polymer resins and considering heat-treatments processes.
For the particular type of parts, the customer has a dominant market share in Japan.
In November, MD Pro Technos established a sales office in Torrance, Calif.
``We are actively looking for manufacturer's representatives,'' said Matthew Engler, vice president of the international division.