Medical Manufacturing Automation

Robots have recent­ly been recruit­ed to work on sur­gi­cal appli­ca­tions, but they are also more com­mon­ly used for automat­ing oper­a­tions in med­ical-device man­u­fac­tur­ing, as well as phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and hos­pi­tal set­tings. Med­ical man­u­fac­tur­ers need to have the flex­i­bil­i­ty to adapt to con­tin­u­ous change, and automa­tion sys­tems must help them respond to the rapid pace of new prod­uct development.

A mod­u­lar, auto­mat­ed trans­port sys­tem to assem­ble and move med­ical device mod­els is essen­tial. Mod­u­lar motion con­trol pro­motes lay­out flex­i­bil­i­ty to max­i­mize space and foot­prints while sav­ing mon­ey. Because of the line changes and recon­fig­u­ra­tion required to han­dle med­ical device prod­ucts, the mod­u­lar motion con­trol pro­motes opti­mized workflows.

Force-con­trol sens­ing and vision-guid­ed sys­tems rep­re­sent advan­tages for med­ical automa­tion. Fanuc​’s iRVi­sion allows users to check the integri­ty of the process with ver­i­fi­ca­tion and trace­abil­i­ty. A robot equipped with iRVi­sion can not only grab a part and put it in a box, but present it to a cam­era and read the bar code as well, which ensures prod­uct safe­ty. Force-con­trol sens­ing enables the robot to ​“feel” and to assem­ble with high­er pro­cess­ing power.

Lab­o­ra­to­ry automa­tion is anoth­er large part of robot­ic med­ical appli­ca­tions, like drug dis­cov­ery. This requires robots to load com­po­nents into microtiter plates to come up with a com­pound to kill bugs. ABB​’s IRB 20 6‑axis mod­el is well-suit­ed for these oper­a­tions, as are Carte­sian robots with SCARA.

Acme Man­u­fac­tur­ing Co. spe­cial­izes in man­u­fac­tur­ing turnkey robot­ic fin­ish­ing sys­tems. For these appli­ca­tions, Acme uses Fanuc robots. The sys­tems designed and built by Acme are for cen­ter­less grind­ing, robot­ic fin­ish­ing, flat-stock grind­ing, and cus­tom turnkey solu­tions. They pol­ish and fin­ish med­ical implants such as knees, hip stems, cups, balls, and shells, tib­ia trays, bone plates, and nails. Fin­ish­ing appli­ca­tions such as these can be very dan­ger­ous for a human, so a robot is an ide­al solu­tion. Acme devel­oped an Ultra-Light Float­ing Head for med­ical part fin­ish­ing. It uses auto­mat­ic force con­trol for the fin­ish­ing heads for opti­mal com­pli­ance. This pro­duces greater repeata­bil­i­ty and improved prod­uct quality. 

ABB Robot­ics uses many of their med­ical robots for high-speed pick-and-place appli­ca­tions. Their Flex­Pick­er robots can kit prod­ucts like blis­ter packs and can also pol­ish hip and knee replace­ments. The Flex­Pick­er is also use­ful in large drug man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies since they are built for speed 

Robot­ic automa­tion also aids phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies with their work on assays. There is an abun­dance of test­ing occur­ring in order to shrink the field. These com­pa­nies are dis­cov­er­ing that robots can deliv­er bet­ter process con­sis­ten­cy. Adept Tech­nol­o­gy Inc. recent­ly signed an agree­ment to be the exclu­sive provider of robots to Swiss­log Health­care Solu­tions for use in hos­pi­tals, labs, and clin­ics. Their robots will trans­port spec­i­mens, lab sam­ples, and pharmaceuticals.

Robots​.com can eas­i­ly help you auto­mate the pro­duc­tion or pack­ag­ing of med­ical instru­ments. Con­tact us today online or at 877−762−6881 for help on which med­ical robot is best for you.