Extrusion

Toray Medical will manufacture a polysulfone membrane dialysis device, which it calls an artificial kidney, in a plant under construction in Qingdao, China.

In the dialysis process, solutions from a patient suffering kidney failure are diffused across a semipermeable membrane such as polysulfone film while circulating outside of the body. Urea and other waste products, potassium, and phosphate diffuse into the dialysis solution. Polysulfone dialysis membranes are well known to have excellent biocompatibility in clinical use.

Polyzen (Apex, NC) is expanding capacity and adding employees to meet rapidly growing demand for its proprietary medical materials, including a new polyurethane film for low-pressure balloons used in cardiovascular and other surgeries.

Extrusion lines with fully integrated quality control systems can now be set up by an operator with an iPhone outside of a clean room.

The new technology will be on display at NPE2012 at the Boston Mathews (Norwood, NJ) booth in the West Hall, number 5862.

A new gauge illustrates the increasing precision of medical processing in the United States.

Direct Flow Medical (Santa Rosa, CA) is now using an OptiGauge to design and perfect advanced catheter and balloon products for a minimally invasive implant used to treat patients with heart valve disease.

The market for solar installations based on copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS) thin-film panels will nearly double in size to $2.35 billion in 2015, as manufacturers signaled a breakout year in 2011 by taking advantage of falling production costs, improving module conversion efficiencies and increasing adoption in commercial rooftops. This according to a Lux Research (Boston, MA) report titled Sorting through the Maze of CIGS Technologies: Who Will Cash in on the Breakout Year?.

Kaiser Permanente, which spends $1 billion annually on medical supplies, announced this morning that it will no longer buy intravenous (IV) medical equipment made with polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and DEHP (di-2-ethyl hexyl phthalate) -type plasticizers.

Compounding technology supplier Coperion GmbH (Stuttgart, Germany) has acquired a majority stake in fellow German firm, PELL-TEC Pelletizing Technology GmbH (Niedernberg), extending its ability to be a complete systems supplier to small and medium sized extruders and allowing them to offer tailor-made pelletizing systems. The 10-yr-old PELL-TEC covers the entire pelletizing process from melt discharge through to ready-to-use pellets, with output rates ranging up to 6000 kg/hr.

A precision assembly is helping ease incontinence and other medical problems caused by a variety of gynecologic conditions, including prolapse.

Engineers at MedPlast (Elkhorn, WI) developed a new approach to a product called pessary balloons that includes a molded part, a check ball and a glued-on silicone extrusion.

Polymera Inc. (Hebron, OH) is commercially producing wood and natural fiber polymer composite compounds after initiating installation of equipment in February of last year, meeting its estimated timeframe to fully outfit its 160,000-sq-ft manufacturing facility in central Ohio with 60 million pounds of WPC compound capacity.

Teknor Apex, one of the world's largest compounders of flexible PVC, is actively developing a PVC-free alternative for medical applications and already reports a handful of commercial applications in smaller sizes.

Replacing PVC in medical applications is a daunting task because of the low cost of PVC compounds, the large infrastructure in place for manufacturing the material, and the regulatory review process required.