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Tecomet’s many facilities around the globe boast more than 200 years of experience in the design and manufacture of high-quality contract implants, instruments, cases and more.

Situation:

Implementation of additive manufacturing capabilities, with which the company had no prior experience. While researching the capital investment it became clear there would be a 6-12 month learning curve associated. Speaking with current additive manufacturing companies it was also clear that the learning curve not only applied to the technology, but had nuances associated by material and machine selection. Tecomet’s goal to partner with Purdue MEP and IN-MaC was to reduce the traditional trial and error approach others had struggled through, in order to increase our build yield.

Solution:

Purdue MEP and IN-MaC were able to provide expertise and equipment, which allowed Tecomet to review a series of Additive Manufacturing builds. This review focused on the metallurgical properties of the laser sintering process and what Tecomet could due to ensure higher success rates regarding this information.

Results:

Previous to the Purdue’s assistance, the company was seeing build yields near 60% success. Prior to the process, Tecomet is now recognizing 95+% yield rates.

“Having access to the expertise and breadth of support In-Mac was able to provide proved instrumental in the successful introduction of Direct Metal Laser Sintering technology. This introduction now allows us to provide cutting edge medical device capabilities to our customers through all phases of development and production.”

-Scott L. Hand, Additive Manufacturing Manager, Tecomet