INJECTION-MOLDING OF MEDICAL PLASTICS - A REVIEW

Given the tight competition in the area of plastics for medical applic ations, the requirements for consistent quality, standardized, safe, a nd low-cost medical components have become a big challenge for molders . The survival of injection molding companies for medical applications depends strongly on the success of design, manufacturing, and marketi ng strategies that different companies have established to meet these requirements. Very often, the design and manufacturing operations to p roduce medical plastics for the health-care market have to be adjusted on a daily basis in order to satisfy increasingly strict, government- regulated, biomedical requirements in addition to all the other pressu res expected in this market. As a result, molders of medical plastics are always seeking more systematic ways to improve product quality and produce more at a minimum cost. This brings an advantage to those pro cessors that can combine high-tech molding with low-cost production. I n this article, based on the open literature, we present a review of t he latest activities (last decade) in the field of injection molding o f medical plastics together with some comments on modern injection mol ding processes that can be used. (C) 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.