Precision Medical Implants Bets on Optical Measurement Technology to Improve Quality
Medical Precision Implants (MPI) is a business project that started in 2008 in Madrid, Spain with the aim of offering medical-surgical implants into the international market. MPI comes from the experience in the precision turning sector, hand in hand with its parent company Nagamohr, who works entirely for the automotive sector.
Nagamohr have 3 Vici Vision machines from the Techno range installed for the quality control of their medium-high complexity turned parts. In order to validate the technology with MPI’s dental implants, they performed several tests, in which they found out that the Techno model didn’t meet the required demands.
MPI has a wide range of products with about 2.000 different references from implants to prosthetic components. Until recently inspection tasks were completed manually using calipers, micrometers and profile projectors. The company’s management set an ambitious challenge: on the one hand, they wanted to optimize control timing to increase productivity, and, on the other hand, improve their product’s quality.
Measuring equipment supplier Sariki advised MPI about the different options available, and they finally decided to invest in the Vici Vision’s MTL X5 series, specifically for micro-machined components, that provides up to 5 times more resolution than the Techno series. The MTL X5 machine is located in the production area, and the production-operators are the ones who perform self-monitoring every 20 minutes, both for implants and prosthetic components. The Vici Vision technology has enabled them to reduce measurement times, especially on parts with a wide variety of dimensions to be checked, and they have managed to eliminate the lack of reliability of manual measurements. This has allowed them to obtain a fully automatic, complete, fast, accurate, and objective control of parts.
Phased Investment of Optical Metrology
In a first phase, MPI has developed different programs for all their references, and designed the fixture adaptable to all of them. In the dental implant sector, the size of the part is a feature that adds complexity. Handling, placement, and measurement of the part, mean a challenge themselves and adapting the programs to every part change has been one of the main challenges for the project team.
In the second phase, people have received training to gain knowledge of the machine and, this way, begin to integrate it into the manufacturing process. First of all, they will perform a manual registration of all the critical dimensions indicated in the plane, but, in the final phase, they have considered the automatic registration using the Vici Vision machine and its traceability with the production order.
For more information: www.vicivision.com
