Mechanical Skiving for Medical Balloon Wall Thickness Control

The patent applies preliminary action by performing skiving on the polymer tube before blow molding to selectively remove material from the cone and waist portions. This pre-modification of the tube geometry ensures that when the balloon is subsequently formed through blow molding, the wall thickness is more uniform throughout, preventing adverse bursting failure modes while maintaining the consistent longitudinal failure plane characteristic of blow-molded balloons.

The patent applies the taking out principle by mechanically removing polymer material through skiving from the cone and waist portions of the tube before blow molding. This extraction of excess material eliminates the need for subsequent stretching operations that would increase molecular orientation and stiffness. The result is a balloon with uniform wall thickness that maintains flexibility and ease of tracking through tortuous vasculature.

The patent replaces the thermal field approach (extreme cold temperature application) with a mechanical field approach (skiving). Instead of using temperature to control material behavior and protect certain portions, the invention uses mechanical material removal through skiving to achieve the desired wall thickness distribution. This mechanical substitution avoids the adverse effects of thermal processing on polymer molecular orientation and flexibility.

The patent employs a pneumatic or mechanical skiving system where a rotating skiving blade or cup removes material from the tube in a controlled manner. This approach differs from conventional cone grinding by enabling non-concentric, patterned material removal that can be precisely controlled to achieve uniform wall thickness throughout the balloon structure, thereby reducing adverse failure modes while maintaining reliability.