Medical, health and environmental

The medical and environmental fields demand strict adherence to manufacturer’s specifications in order to ensure the reliability of finished products. Delivering thermal processing at the highest global standards, Bodycote is uniquely suited to handle this important work.

Dental

Like any other medical tool or device, dental tools and appliances are manufactured to strict guidelines to ensure correct operation. The materials and processes utilised require specialised thermal processing solutions.

Bodycote provides various vacuum based treatments for use in dental and orthodontic component manufacture. To maintain the required surface finish, vacuum hardening or vacuum ageing is used to produce the required material properties. For attaching carbide inserts vacuum brazing is utilised. Many dental items are also treated by ferritic nitrocarburising ensuring a hard wearing surface and the ability to withstand numerous sterilisation cycles.

• Orthodontic cutters
• Tip inserts
• Clips

Medical implants

The stress on a hip or knee joint when a person jumps off a chair is equal to around 100 tonnes per square inch. Our bones, effectively composites, absorb such stresses regularly and effectively for much of our lifetime. When joints fail, they are often replaced with metal alloy implants. These implants must be incredibly strong, biocompatible, and able to last the lifetime of the patient. A combination of heat treatment, hot isostatic pressing and coating makes this possible. Many medical implants are made from cast cobalt chromium which require biomedical coating to promote bonding between the implant and body tissue, then hot isostatic pressing to remove eliminate porosity, improve fatigue life and enhance the bonding of the coating. Solution and ageing heat treatment is also used to strengthen the implant.

• Hip implants
• Knee joints
• Cases
• Shields
• Capacitor cans
• Battery contacts
• Bone screws

Surgical tools

It goes without saying that the quality and reliability of surgical tools is of prime importance. A defective tool during a medical procedure could have dire consequences.

Many surgical tools require vacuum hardening in order to strengthen the tools whilst maintaining the fine surface finish. In addition, vacuum brazing is used to attach carbide cutting medium to surgical saws and other implements.

• Clamps
• Sidelock
• Modular tap
• Bone saw

Stainless steel

The advantages of stainless steel make it a material of choice for surgical tools and implants. Yet, design teams often struggle with issues of galling, insufficient surface hardness, and wear resistance. Bodycote’s proprietary S³P processes provide surface hardening that increases key mechanical properties of stainless steel without sacrificing its corrosion resistance, ductility, and capacity for cleaning and sterilisation.