Customer Case Medical devices: The OEM medical systems manufacturing Market is a very challenging business environment. Melotte delivers since many years high precision assemblies to GE's corperate R&D Department. Miniaturazation & hybrid part geometries are commonly used in this field. As soon as a device gets in contact with human organism the quality parameters are getting more substantial. A few months ago Melotte has been asked to think about optimising different parts in a bloodpump device. Given the operational environment we had to think about reducing the number of different parts in the assembly and to miniaturize the entire system. All these interventions should finally lead to cost savings of at least 35%. Another topic was the centrifugal device optimisation, this device generates important vorticity and the existing assembly of curved channels had a major impact on the product price. .
The picture (left) shows two of the parts that have been re-engineered and produced in aluminum (body) and 1.4404 (centrifuge). We're showing the rough built parts. After RM the parts are put on the high-precision milling center for finishing, the internal channels are pasta polished up to 0.15 Ra.
Economics: Fly to buy ratio reduced from 6/1 to 1.3/1, product cost reduced by almost 23%, assembly cost reduced by 40%. Yearly consumption estimated at 400/year. R&D, re-engineering and prototyping costs (NRC) are depreciated in 18 months.
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Another good example of how RM can be used in costsaving programs and individual part manufacturing (DDM) reduces the impact on Global Warming. 80% saving is raw material & about 65% in energy consumption per assembly!
