The processing of medical parts mainly has the following major difficulties

1. Difficult-to-machine titanium alloy materials

Ninety percent of medical parts and accessories implant components are supported by Ti6AI-4V titanium alloy. Due to its light weight, high strength and high biocompatibility, titanium alloy 6Al-4V has become the most commonly used material for medical implant devices.

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Titanium alloys have the characteristic of work hardening. During the processing, the shear is relatively large, the resulting chips are thin, and a relatively small contact area is formed on the cutting tool. In addition, the high cutting force during the processing, combined with the frictional force when the chip flows, will comprehensively lead to excessive local cutting heat of the tool. However, titanium alloys have poor thermal conductivity, which prevents the cutting heat from being conducted away quickly.

2. Reliable and compact machine tool fixtures

Medical parts and accessories equipment needs to be capable of processing small and complex parts made of difficult-to-machine materials with high precision requirements. For instance, processing replacement parts for bones and joints is quite complicated. Due to the poor cutting performance of the processed material, the blank is usually a bar stock - which means a large amount of metal needs to be removed.

Processing of medical parts and accessories

Medical parts and accessories have high requirements for workpiece materials, processing accuracy, surface finish, etc., which demands high reliability of the processing system. Thus, extremely high requirements are placed on machine tools, fixtures, cutting tools, CAM software, etc.

Iii. Stable and efficient cutting tools

1. The requirements for machine tools are relatively high; Advanced medical device processing equipment such as Swiss automatic lathes, multi-spindle machine tools and rotary tables are completely different from the commonly seen machining centers and lathes. They are very small in size and very compact in structure. To meet such requirements, the structure of the cutting tools also needs to be specially designed. The size of the cutting tools should be very small, and at the same time, the rigidity of the cutting tools should be guaranteed.

2. High requirements for processing efficiency; For medical devices, the most valued aspect is processing efficiency, that is, processing rhythm. It is required that the blades can be replaced in the shortest possible time.

3. In terms of the workpiece itself, it is quite different from other mechanical components. Medical devices implanted in the human body are first required to have an extremely smooth surface and very high precision, without any deviation. This demands that the design of the blade structure and the blade coating of the cutting tools all meet very high processing requirements.