Progress of medical catheter processing and production technology

Precision extrusion of medical catheter is a comprehensive system engineering, raw materials, equipment, technology, etc., will affect the quality and output of the final product, and every link in the production process needs to be improved to ensure the quality and output of the final product. The manufacturing equipment of medical catheter mainly includes single screw extruder, high precision head mold, vacuum cooling water tank, outer diameter measuring instrument, medical traction cutting machine and conveying collection tank, etc., their accuracy and function determine the precision of the catheter to a certain extent. Precision medical catheter is an important medical instrument in interventional therapy, and the allowable deviation range of its diameter is less than 5%. From the perspective of some trends collected at the 2022 medical device exhibition, the development trend of precision catheters is mainly reflected in the high-speed production process, the precision of product size, the complexity of catheter structure and the endless emergence of new materials. Different from ordinary PVC catheters, precision medical catheters are smaller in size and more complex in cross-section, usually requiring multi-cavity, diameter reduction, opposite sex cavity, multi-layer co-extrusion, more diverse material choices (TPU, FEP, PTFE), higher dimensional accuracy requirements, and tolerances are usually 1/1000 inch, that is, 0.025mm. At present, many enterprises and research and development institutions in China have begun to study more efficient precision medical catheter production methods, and some high-end medical catheter manufacturers at home and abroad have begun to try to produce high-precision extrusion medical catheters, including Zeus in the United States, Ningbo Micro Rabbit Polymer Materials Co., LTD., and a number of excellent medical precision extrusion catheter enterprises. Precision extrusion of medical catheter has strict requirements on extrusion equipment and technology.