Top Tool

Posted by Ted Huot, Engineering Lead
 
It happened before I knew it. Halfway through a “medical device competiveness” study by Harvard Business School guru Michael Porter. On page 18, I was up. By page 19, I was down.

First, Professor Porter made my micro metal stamping day. Two elements in the medical devices “value chain” account for 35% of the total cost for an OEM to move a product from concept to selection by a physician. And Top Tool works daily to optimize both inputs for medical device customers who depend on us to manufacture complex, precision components

The two value chain elements we impact significantly are materials and manufacturing. Especially, according to Porter, as it relates to precision production and joint design and development with contract manufacturers.

Bulls-eye. That’s our story. We support medical device customers where it counts.

But then Porter let some air out of my balloon. He said materials and manufacturing are becoming increasingly commoditized. In other words, anyone can provide the outcomes. And do it for less. “In the last five years,” he reports, “56% of new or expanded manufacturing facilities for major medical device companies were outside of the United States.”

I won’t argue statistical study with a Harvard professor. But I take issue with the perspective that manufacturing micro and micro-miniature components is a plain-vanilla capability.

Take the materials issue. Metal stamping, in total, is a large and crowded category. But the supplier population shrinks significantly when it includes only contract manufacturers specializing in complex precision micro and micro-miniature components 2mm and smaller. That narrow slice contains an even smaller sub-specialty: stamping complex precision micro parts from precious and exotic metals. Most frequently gold, silver and platinum. But also emerging, unique-property specialty metals like Nitinol, Titanium and MP35N cut, stamped and formed into complex-featured components. Like the electrodes critical to implantable, continually shrinking pacemakers and pain management neurostimulators.

Collaborative product design and development? I can report that joint – very non-commodity –  R&D is critical in precision micro stamping for medical device components. We build on and combine our respective strengths and resources into new, better approaches. Which generate higher-performing solutions.

In fact, looking for answers to cost-effective, high-quality device miniaturization is tailor-made for collaboration between OEM product designers/engineers and precision micro stamping. Particularly in the early stages of development. When there is still R&D room to create and evaluate possibilities that a precision stamping capability can provide. And especially in the case of producing highly complex part features on components that are miniature or micro-miniature. With tolerances down to the µm level.

Complex and precision micro component production creates challenges that less-equipped suppliers are forced to avoid. And that takes commodity-level materials and manufacturing skills out of the equation.

(Give us your thoughts by clicking on "Comments" in the blue bar below.)

Posted By Dave Kari, Director of Wire EDM

In the manufacture of precision micro components 1mm and smaller – with complex geometries and critical features down to 0.1mm – the tooling and parts are only as good as the wire electronic discharge machining (EDM ) capability.

The art and science of setting wire on a path to achieve the otherwise-impossible has long been the answer to challenges traditional milling or grinding can’t accomplish. That’s how .008in and .010in wire became the popular go-to solutions. Then we downsized to .002in and .004in wire. Today, with miniaturization driving a very real need to tame highly challenging .0008in cutting, micromanufacturing often is only as good as very small-wire EDM programming.

Life on the .0008in wire is like taking part in outrageous, game-changing science. In the micromanufacturing context – especially as production continues sub-micron – today’s routine, EDM-powered advances weren’t imagined just a few years ago. When someone is skeptical that it’s possible to precision microstamp “something that small and complex,” the explanation includes what small-wire EDM evolution has done to advance tool engineering and building. Like the ability to maneuver through a workpiece with a material thickness-to-thinnest-feature ratio that comes in at 25-to-1.

Amazingly, NC programming that makes a wire so capable starts with just three G-code commands: proceed straight, clockwise or counter-clockwise. Plus some algorithms and CAD/CAM power. But there is a non-math element also critical to small-wire programming: on-the-part experience.

Here are a two things I know about balancing on the small wire:

Learn to see what the wire is going to see. By assembling the best theory on what will occur. What did the outcome from the last wire execution tell you? You can’t always know for certain what caused a failure, but experience gradually builds a pre-routine menu of indicators, variables and scenarios that help you anticipate what the wire and the machine will encounter. And what will result.

Personal discipline is key. Small-wire EDM programming is a lesson in patience and intestinal fortitude. Sometimes it takes multiple re-programs in order to complete the optimal, most effective path. Especially on ultra-complex micro and micro-miniature projects. It requires “wire path forensics” and deductive reasoning. Execute your theory. Cut the sample part. Determine how to compensate for what you observed. And then repeat the process again. Eliminating errors until none remain.

(Give us your thoughts by clicking on "Comments" in the blue bar below.)

Posted by Duane Kari, Technical Sales Support Lead, Top Tool

I learned today there are more than 500,000 apps – and counting – for my iPhone. I’m not sure how a software review can sort through all those programs and isolate the “10 apps you must have now.” But fresh versions of that list seem to pop up almost weekly.

Recent technology-based events at Top Tool prompted me to think about a pair of “must have” precision metal stamping capabilities specific to manufacturing micro or micro-miniature parts. Especially components with complex geometries and ultra-tight tolerances. Two must-have traits clearly necessary to pursue miniaturization and complexity – plus the low-cost, high-precision benefits unique to micro metal stamping – are speed and precision agility.

More specifically, speed and precision agility that perform all the way down to the μm level. Here are two examples of what speed and agility look like at Top Tool:

Speed. A new Makino F5 vertical CNC machining center achieves a standard in high-speed, hard-material milling that sets Top Tool’s in-house tool making capability apart from most contract parts manufacturers. The high-speed heart of the F5 tight-tolerance performance is a spindle – turning at up to 20,000 rpm – that enables the production of small details and fine features utilizing small cutting tools. Even with the tool steels rated high on the Rockwell scale.

The ability to precisely machine the hardest tool steels is essential to engineer and produce intricate dies that deliver the advanced features and complex geometries associated with micro and micro-miniature parts. Particularly for today’s medical device and electronics applications.

Precision Agility. Wire electronic discharge machining (EDM) already has a reputation as the machining process with the agility to step up on intricate micron and sub-micron challenges that traditional methods can’t meet. Our AgieCharmilles Vertex 1F EDM center – which recently earned “Manufacturing Innovation of the Year” honors for Top Tool in the 2011 Minnesota Manufacturing Awards – takes micron-level, small-wire agility a few steps further. One of only four such systems online in the United States, the Vertex 1F erodes metal using a .02mm (.0008in.) wire, which is less than one-quarter the diameter of a human hair.

Top Tool has a reputation for accepting micro-component tool making and precision stamping that other companies can’t or won’t. That’s partially the result of confidence and a can-do approach. Equally important is technology, like the latest small-wire EDM, which gives us the agility to challenge and get beyond current precision metal stamping boundaries.

(Give us your thoughts by clicking on “Comments” in the blue bar below.)

Posted by Duane Kari, Technical Sales Support Lead, Top Tool

MICROmanufacturing Magazine looks at micro stamping. When it comes to component manufacturing, advances in product miniaturization by medical device and electronics manufacturers challenge the best methods of conventional metal working. Dimensions are decreasing, complexity is increasing, and precision is measured in thousandths of a millimeter. Is precision metal stamping is up to the task? 

The answer is yes. But much of what’s possible at the high-end of tool engineering and stamping today wasn’t imagined as recently as five years ago. How can you distinguish the relatively new micro stamping specialty from its old-school heritage and reputation for non-complicated, flat-profile and standard-precision parts?

In the September/October issue of MICROmanufacturing, Top Tool looks at critical characteristics that predict a supplier’s aptitude for building tools and manufacturing complex precision components specified in millimeters and microns. Read the article here.

Wire EDM attracts innovation honors. Top Tool has a long and loyal relationship with wire EDM. The technology differentiates our approach to precision tool making and component parts stamping. Particularly in what we can achieve for customers who require complex micro and micro-miniature components with advanced features. Today, we probably utilize and integrate wire EDM more consistently than most precision metal stamping manufacturers.

The wire EDM center that is one of only four such systems online in the United States recently won Top Tool Manufacturing Innovation of the Year honors in the 2011 Minnesota Manufacturing Awards sponsored by Minnesota Business magazine. Our Swiss-made AgieCharmilles Vertex 1F expands the capacity to meet precision and complexity specs that accelerate as high-tech manufacturers miniaturize product footprints. Read about it here.

Visit Top Tool at MD&M Minneapolis. We are located in the heart of Minnesota’s Medical Alley, so we regularly collaborate with medical device designers, engineers and strategic sourcing specialists on micro component solutions. After 25 years co-creating complex precision stamping answers to decreased dimensions, increased complexity and exotic material challenges, we look always forward to "talking shop" during MD&M Minneapolis.

If you attend the show, please visit us in Booth #1540. For complimentary admission, as our guest, click here to register. Use promo code XG.

(Give us your thoughts by clicking on “Comments” in the blue bar below.)

Posted by Duane Kari, Technical Sales Support Lead, Top Tool

A Top Tool white paper on how to identify metal stamping optimized to manufacture complex precision micro components looks at six critical factors. Factor #5 suggests evaluating the caliber of supplier-based programs that drive deliverables like R&D, prototyping and risk management. Is a supplier’s capability basic or advanced? The use of high-end control plans to manage risk, for example, is not practiced and perfected across-the-board in manufacturing.

You can also learn about a supplier’s core programs and systems by looking at the company they keep. Risk management is more demanding story for a supplier that stamps precision micro components for implantable (highly FDA-regulated) medical devices. Likewise, sophisticated control plans are increasingly standard business practice for high-end stamping in electronics, defense and energy.

Here’s another example. As a micro component supplier to defense industry manufacturers, Top Tool is obligated to implement strict systems and processes compliant with an important U.S. national security directive called the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). ITAR has been in place since 1976 to control the export of defense-related technologies and services. In other words, it’s important for military OEMs – and organizations in their supply chains – to prevent the disclosure or transfer of sensitive information into the hands of foreign nationals who could represent a threat to U.S. national security. The list of ITAR-covered technologies and services ranges from firearms and ammunition to tanks and spacecraft systems.

Suppliers to defense industry manufacturers have an automatic obligation, as part of their relationships with OEMs in this category, to establish standards in control, compliance and confidentiality that tend to be more highly developed than practices required under standard  commercial business scenarios. Involvement with these kinds of requirements can indicate a supplier that is in the habit of developing and implementing systems that require a higher caliber of performance.

(Give us your thoughts by clicking on "Comments" in the blue bar below.)

Posted by Duane Kari, Technical Sales Support Lead, Top Tool

“Do or do not. There is no try.”
            -  Yoda, Jedi Master, in The Empire Strikes Back

Yoda would appreciate the certainty of success that precision micro stamping can deliver. Using tool-and-die technology to produce a complex micro part enables unmatchable confidence in successfully duplicating the outcome with every cycle. There is no trying. There is only doing.

Variability inherent in a machining or laser process has the potential to produce parts that are at least minimally different each time. Additional handling required by multiple operations increases the risk of variation even further. On the other hand, a stamping tool component made from hardened steel can only cause the shape, form, cut or bend that it has taken on. Not to mention holding the same ultra-tight tolerance with every stroke.

For that reason – along with other evolutionary micro stamping advances like in-tool computerized sensing and multi-station progressive dies – relying on micro stamping to achieve a zero-defect experience is like an object in your side-view mirror. It’s closer than it appears.

The amount of trust you can have in micro stamping increases as part complexity increases. Ultra-tight tolerances. Critical geometries. Multiple bends and forms. The more that’s going on in a component, the more you want the tool to do it. There is simplicity in building a dozen, or more, distinct operations into a progressive die. Which is like a self-contained, mini-manufacturing line. The difficulty and complication comes from using a non-stamp method that can only execute multiple operations by involving multiple machining centers in the process. And then using after-the-fact sampling and inspection to establish the point where production got far enough off-print to create out-of-spec parts.

Micro and micro-miniature parts – with micro-dimensioned critical features – is a whole new arena. And it’s ideal for precision stamping, which inserts quality and conformance much closer to where the part is made. Rather than “inspecting it in” downstream. Particularly since any amount of handling, when it comes to a delicate micro part, can alter a part dimensionally. That’s why non-contact measurement – like using a vision system – is mandatory for quality assurance in micro stamping.

As Yoda might recommend if you are hesitant about precision metal stamping. “Trust the (tool) Force.”

(Give us your thoughts by clicking on "Comments" in the blue bar below.)