Medical plastics center to open at Penn State

During last week’s NPE2009 plastics show in Chicago, John Beaumont, professor of engineering and chair of the Plastics Engineering Technology degree programs at the university, told Modern Plastics that the school is to start a certificate for a medical plastics program by the spring of 2010. A $150,000 Keystone Innovation Zone Starter Kit grant will be used to help establish the program, which is designed to assist plastics processors interested in producing medical devices using multicomponent molding and liquid silicon rubber (LSR) molding techniques, two areas he says present a high potential for growth.

“Adoption of these two molding technologies offers an opportunity to achieve product differentiation versus low-technology commodity imports,” Beaumont says. “There is a projected 10%-20%/yr growth for these specialty products as opposed to an 8% decline for plastics commodity components.” The Starter Kit grant is to be used to establish lab infrastructure needed for materials compounding, multicomponent materials characterization testing, and multicomponent processing. The lab will include a modular cleanroom to act as training and prototype facility.

The program envisioned by Beaumont will handle regulatory issues, selection and processing of medical materials, issues related to sterilization, implants, design, and documentation. Initially the program will be part of the undergraduate studies but Beaumont says as it progresses he expects it will be offered directly to employees of processing operations as a continuing education option.

Beaumont, along with department head Ralph M. Ford, were on the prowl in the aisles at the NPE last week, looking for new equipment to acquire for the program. Beaumont also said new faculty, particularly in materials sciences, will have to be hired to conduct the program along with the existing staff.

Beaumont told Modern Plastics he believes medical processing would most likely not be outsourced overseas since anxiety about quality and accuracy would be too high to allow cost to be the overriding factor. “The health field has considerable doubts about sourcing medical devices from the third world. I think most people are concerned that we can’t even get toys from China without lead in them,” he says. —[email protected]