Custom bushing for medical devices

Improved wear resistance of conduit and other equipment

Bushings have many uses in medical equipment, from hospital beds to prosthetic joints. In general, these bushings:

Used as gasket to prevent metal to metal contact

Reduce friction between metal parts

Simplifies the movement of reciprocating parts in low speed applications such as patient lifts.

However, are you aware that custom bushings are manufactured for some high-speed medical device applications?

Custom bushing processing advantages

Medical device manufacturers often use simply machined bushings or cut metal tubes as gaskets between metal plates in their equipment. Usually, rivets compress plates by ID of bushing or tube and hold them together and parallel.

But for the metal bushings used for the tiny tips of catheters and other equipment, the tips are usually custom Swiss machined into the final shape. This is because custom-sized tubes of Elgiloy, MP35N and many other special materials often used in medical equipment are not readily available.

In addition, the tips may need to be uniquely manufactured so that they can be welded to other metallic features in the conduit, such as coils or braids, or embedded in polymers at the tip.

Sometimes, the commercial realities of the supply chain and metallurgical limitations create opportunities for Swiss-style processing due to the volume and performance required by medical device manufacturers (our customers).

For example, metal cutting for an MP35N bushing produced in bulk by a customer would be more cost effective to manufacture from a single pipe. However, the pipe manufacturing process cannot achieve the necessary high tensile strength in the MP35N clamp casing.

The good news is that the pull rod process produces the required tensile strength, so we were able to successfully machined bushings from the MP35N rod.

Please contact us at zhang@pride-cnc.com