3D Printed Medical Device Surfaces for Flexible Catheter Navigation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing manufacturing processes for medical devices like catheters and leads struggle with designing and manufacturing flexible yet stiff devices that can navigate tortuous paths in the human body, often requiring compromises between dimensions, flexibility, and material selection.
Innovation Solution
An additive manufacturing system that allows for customizable design and production of medical devices, enabling integration of specific features and geometries tailored to individual patient anatomy, using a polymer printer and polymer lathe to create devices with varying hardness levels and surface protrusions for enhanced performance.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If conventional extrusion manufacturing is used, then manufacturing simplicity is maintained, but design flexibility and customization capability are limited
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies parameter changes by utilizing additive manufacturing technology to fundamentally alter the manufacturing process parameters, transitioning from conventional extrusion to layer-by-layer deposition. This enables customized geometries, varying material properties, and patient-specific designs while maintaining manufacturing feasibility through automated printing processes.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent employs composite materials by combining different materials with varying hardness levels and properties within a single catheter structure. This allows different sections of the catheter to have optimized properties for specific functions, such as more flexible distal sections for navigation and stiffer proximal sections for pushability, resolving the contradiction between flexibility and structural integrity.
2Ease of operation
If catheter flexibility is increased to navigate tortuous paths, then navigability through vasculature is improved, but pushability and structural integrity deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by creating catheters with spatially varying material properties and structural characteristics. The catheter can have different hardness levels, wall thicknesses, and material compositions at different locations along its length, allowing the distal end to be more flexible for navigation while maintaining pushability from the stiffer proximal sections.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent uses composite materials with different mechanical properties in various sections of the catheter. By combining materials with different hardness levels and elastic moduli, the catheter achieves both flexibility for navigating tortuous vasculature and sufficient structural integrity for pushability, eliminating the need to compromise between these opposing requirements.
3Adaptability or versatility
If standardized catheter designs are used, then manufacturing efficiency is maintained, but patient-specific anatomical requirements cannot be met
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies parameter changes by enabling rapid reconfiguration of manufacturing parameters for additive production. Digital design files can be easily modified to create patient-specific catheters with customized dimensions, geometries, and material distributions, while the automated additive manufacturing process maintains high production efficiency without requiring expensive custom tooling for each variant.
Data Source
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AI summary
Systems and methods for manufacturing an elongate medical device including various surface features. The system including a heating cartridge, a heating element, a filament handling system, a substrate handling system, a controller, and one or more additional components adapted to form the surface features on the medical device. The heating element melts a filament material within the heating cartridge to form a jacket of the medical device and the one or more additional components engages the outer surface of the jacket to create surface features.