June 3, 2024
Intro
You’ll notice that every major industry has plenty of opportunities to use CNC-machined parts. These parts are highly customizable, can be made to be very high-quality, offer great cost, and can boast quick turnaround times. In the medical and healthcare industry, it’s the same story: CNC-machined parts can be found everywhere.
In this piece, our machining experts will explain 8 specific places where you might see CNC-machined parts in the medical and healthcare industry. These applications of CNC-machined parts are just scratching the surface, and our team can help you find unique solutions to your operation.
Surgical Instrumentation
Surgical instrumentation needs to be very precise, and every unit of the same instrument needs to be dimensionally identical. With CNC machining, we can make anything from scalpels to forceps and clamps with no issues. After creating a program on our CNC machine, we can create thousands of the same part for your medical facility.
CNC machines have the accuracy and repeatability you need to create an inventory of surgical instruments.
Medical Device Manufacturing
More generally, people will turn to CNC machining for their new medical devices. This can either refer to making some copies of existing devices, or creating a brand-new, cutting-edge device to introduce to the market.
For medical device manufacturing, CNC machines offer flexibility and customization. This benefit makes CNC machining a no-brainer for anyone trying to make a new medical device.
Devices are often an assembly of a few different parts, all of which can be made on the same CNC machine. We can help your device go through prototyping phases, iterative designs, and final production-quality manufacturing all under one roof at Rapid Axis.
Prototyping and Rapid Tooling
Speaking of prototyping, CNC machinery makes it easier than ever to get high-quality prototypes in your hands. These prototypes can be used to get funding from investors, sign-off from stakeholders, or they can go through a series of destructive tests to validate your design.
No matter what reason you need a prototype, CNC machinery can help. Our CNC machines can work with every common metal or plastic on the market. This ensures that the prototype is functionally identical to what your final product will be.
Since CNC machines can run with very little human interaction (after the initial setup), we can create prototypes quickly without sacrificing the quality of your parts.
Medical Equipment Enclosures Like MRIs
Enclosures are often made with CNC machining, sheet metal, or injection molding. Injection molding is only applicable when you’re making massive volumes of products, and sheet metal only works for really thin pieces of metal.
If you need to either prototype an enclosure, or you need something quick, then CNC machining is the right option. We can make custom enclosures that meet your dimensional specifications, material choice, color choice, and even finishing requirements.
With our help, you can get CNC-machined metal enclosures with your branding and labeling on every enclosure.
Dental Tooling
Dental tooling falls in that difficult manufacturing category where the quality, small size, repeatability, and accuracy all need to be spot-on. For these reasons alone, CNC machining has been the clear winner when it comes to making dental tooling.
Our machines can make small dental tools out of metal or plastic, with a focus on quality and repeatability. Need a dozen dental drills, mirrors, and sickle probes? We can handle it with CNC machining.
Dental or Medical Implants
Another dental-themed application of CNC-machined parts is dental implants — and more generally, medical implants. People usually don’t think about it, but where do the titanium rods, new metal hip joints, and replacement knee implants come from? In a lot of cases, these are CNC-machined parts from a high-quality machine shop.
These implants need to be incredibly high-quality, since they’re supposed to live inside a human body for the rest of the patient’s life. CNC machining offers the quality and accuracy that is essential when it comes to these types of implants.
Laboratory Equipment
Lab equipment is another category that pairs nicely with CNC machining. We can make small desktop machines or massive lab equipment that takes up a whole room. Good lab equipment is tailored to your needs, so this means using a custom design for specific components.
CNC machining can make these custom parts and prepare all of the parts to be assembled into your piece of lab equipment. Whether you just need a single panel or an entire equipment assembly fabricated, allow our team at Rapid Axis to help.
Various Tools
Finally, there are countless various tools that are used in medical and healthcare operations that can utilize CNC machining. These applications of CNC are more unique to your operation. Whenever you need a part made out of metal or plastic, regardless of the size or complexity, it’s always worth considering CNC machining. CNC machines are very accurate, fast, and are a high-quality manufacturing method that countless companies choose.
Conclusion
As you just learned, there are a lot of applications of CNC-machined parts in the medical and healthcare industries. This list of 8 examples is just scratching the surface — there are so many more use cases for CNC machinery when it comes to medical manufacturing.
To get a better idea of how you can use CNC-machined parts in your own operation, reach out to our team at Rapid Axis. We’ve been serving the medical industry for decades, and we can take on your most difficult project. Get a free quote today.