Medical Device O-ring Assembly

A leading global med-device company approached Ward Automation with a project to automate the assembly process for some of their products.

One key part of this project was the assembly of a barrier coated O-ring onto a plastic component at a rate of 35ppm. However any over stretching of the o-ring during assembly would damage the integrity of the coating, which could impact on the operation of the final product.

We contacted a number of the major O-ring gripper manufacturers, but after a number of trials, none of these could provide a solution that could carry out the O-ring assembly without compromising the coating.

We put the challenge back to our own design team at our Sligo facility and after some brainstorming, a concept was developed which we rapidly prototyped using our in-house 3D printer. The prototype was fine tuned for a production machine and we were able to proceed within a tight timeline with the unique and innovative design.

For more information on similar projects, please contact our Sligo office at +353 71 9150039

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