Focus: MedicalLSR and holistic service meet to add value

A molder who can put silicone rubber on silicone rubber is a rarity, and this firm’s proprietary technology does just that. The result is art-to-part service, including in-house materials compounding.

Overmolding of liquid silicone rubber (LSR) parts onto additional silicone components extruded in-house is but one of the distinguishing, value-added services SF Medical (Hudson, MA) provides health care device OEMs.

Its proprietary overmolding technology chemically crosslinks separate components. This obviates the need for adhesives and connectors, dramatically reducing the number of different materials used in a device, as well as assembly costs and 501K application testing.

It’s an understatement to say SF Medical is a full-service company. Today, many molders offer a full suite of concurrent design services and produce the final products. SF Medical does, too. But unlike many others, SF Medical also compounds its own biocompatible materials in-house.

“Our goal is to add value to our customers by being involved from the design phase through to providing a robust product with highly consistent performance,” says Tim Pryce, president.

Lean LSR Molding

SF Medical is a division of Chase-Walton, a 50-year-old U.S. company that specializes in the design, development, and fabrication of silicone elastomer components. Though it’s been extruding and compression molding for 50 years, SF Medical got involved in LSR molding just four years ago. Through the recent acquisition of B&M Inc. (New Lebanon, NY), a silicone products provider, it plans to double its LSR molding capacity over the next year.

Last summer, it adopted lean manufacturing principles into its molding operations by working with the Massachusetts Manufacturing Extension Partnership of Worcester, MA. (For more on MassMEP, see April 2004 IMM.)

In a Class 100,000 cleanroom environment, SF Medical runs multiple custom-built LSR molding machines ranging up to 90 tons. Its presses are arranged in the typical U-shaped lean production cell design; its cells also incorporate post-mold cooling, die cutting, inspection, and packing stations.

SF Medical designs its own molds and undertakes a comprehensive process validation on each new product, typically to Six Sigma levels of repeatability.

Supply-chain Integration

“Our customers recognize us as an expert vendor, largely because we add value to the desired end result, not just in the supply of a single component,” Pryce says. “If you can’t add value, why are you in the supply chain?”

The company employs 40, working in two shifts, four days a week. Fridays are exclusively devoted to kaizen management.

Its molding and extrusion operations occupy about 25,000 sq ft of its 60,000-sq-ft facility. In addition to ISO 9001-2000 certification, the company is certified and registered in several other key standards.

Product design, material formulation, manufacturing—SF Medical’s holistic approach is paying off. Pryce says the company gets about 300 new part numbers/year and plans to grow its liquid injection molding business 100% this year.