First-Time Exhibitors
Guidewires, Screws, and Mandrels Are Supplier’s Daily Grind
Half a century and counting.
That’s how long M&S
Centerless Grinding Inc.
(Hatboro, PA) has been in the
business of providing grinding
services to a range of industries.
few years later, M&S redoubled
its efforts to focus on the
medical sector, the only market
that Shegda thought could hold
up well “even if the general
economy went south.”
Today, with an increasing focus
on the medtech industry, the
family-run company offers
precision centerless and
cylindrical grinding services to
medical device manufacturers
across North America and
M&S Centerless Grinding offers medical core
pins and other components.
Europe. Employing an array of precision grinding
equipment, the company can achieve tolerances on
component diameters, geometries, and features that
used to be considered impossible.
In 2007, a year before
Shegda became the company’s
sole owner, M&S strengthened
its medical machine mix by
adding a guidewire grinder to
perform contract manufacturing
services. “We do not design,
market, or try to sell guidewires, like many
companies in the industry,” Shegda emphasizes.
“All we want to do is grind.”
“We always did a bit of work for the medical
industry—grinding bars for screw machines or
grinding device components,” says John Shegda, who
joined his brother in acquiring the business from their
father in 1990. “Then about 10 years ago, we made a
concerted effort to concentrate more on the medical
and aerospace industries, since they seemed to fit best
with the company’s high-end grinding philosophy.”
To further that effort, the company acquired
flexible grinding equipment in the late 1990s that
enabled it to complete several difficult projects in
the medical device area, including a locking pin for
a heart-valve clip and a critical piece for a blood-testing instrument. Following a plant expansion a
In addition to guidewires and K-wires, the
company grinds screws, hypotubes, core pins,
mandrels, microsized parts for implants, and parts
for dilators. Using multiaxis CNC OD/ID, Swiss-type
centerless, CNC centerless, ultraprecision centerless,
and precision centerless grinding methods, M&S can
produce multiple part features such as diameters,
tapers, radii, flats, and threads in one operation. It
can also achieve diameter tolerances to ±0.00005
in., concentricity of ground features to submicron
tolerances, diameters as small as 0.002 in., and
finishes to 4 Ra.
Highlighting these products and its guidewire
grinding capability, the company will also acquaint
MD&M East attendees with its core-pin grinding
Aussie Firm Has Big Ideas for Microtechnology
When it comes to making miniature medical parylene coating, micromachining, testing, mask
devices, design and development challenges can aligning, cleanroom manufacturing, lithography,
become significantly magnified. Luckily, there’s nanoimprint lithography, and polymer processing.
an expanding handful of companies with the niche Polymer processing has become an increasing
know-how in microtechnology to properly serve focus due to the company’s belief that silicon-based
the industry. Among them is MiniFAB (Scoresby, microtechnology has distinct limitations in medical
Australia), an Australian company dedicated applications, according to Milojevic. “While
to the design, development, and manufacture MiniFAB still has ‘classical’ MEMS capabilities,
of implants and diagnostic devices that include today only 10% of its business is based on silicon
polymer-based microtechnology processing, with the rest coming
and microfluidics solutions. from microtechnology processing
Since it was established as of polymers,” he says.
a spin-off from the Industrial With its scope steadily
Research Institute Swinburne expanding, MiniFAB aims to
(Melbourne, Australia) in 2002, become a more prominent figure
MiniFAB has applied its core on the global stage. Working
competencies in microtechnology, toward this goal, MiniFAB will
microfluidics, and nanotechnology exhibit at MD&M East. “It is
to an array of implantable and the biggest medical device and
diagnostic devices. Applications manufacturing fair in the world
have included stents, catheters, and a perfect opportunity to
electronic implants, combination launch our company to [the] U.S.
MiniFAB, a specialist in
products, surgical tools, and market,” Milojevic says. “We also
microtechnology and microfluidics,
point-of-care and laboratory- recognize the need to educate
developed the osmolarity test card for
based diagnostic systems, customers about the potential
the MDEA-winning TearLab system.
including lab-on-a-chip products. of micro- and nanotechnology in
Enabling this project diversity their applications.”
are extensive capabilities for the manufacture The company’s involvement with a 2009 Medical
of microsized components with tolerances of Design Excellence Award–winning product, which will
1% or less. “We found that there are very few, be honored at the show, provides an added incentive
if any, players who are capable of integrating a to exhibit. MiniFAB developed the disposable
large number of complex process steps to deliver osmolarity test card for the TearLab osmolarity
a product that requires microtechnology and system, manufactured by TearLab Corp. (San
microfluidic features under [an] ISO 13485:2003 Diego). The card features a 75-μm-wide microfluidic
regulatory umbrella,” says Dusan Milojevic, channel designed to collect 50 nl of tears for point-
MiniFAB manager, devices. “[The] majority of of-care biomarker analysis. –S.L.
players specialize in one to two areas. We have ■ MiniFAB
a long list of methodologies available.” Included
www.minifab.au
on this list are injection molding, electroforming,
Booth #637
expertise, which enables it to produce core pins
with the intricate shapes and tiny diameter sizes
required by many medical devices. Shegda comments,
“When people visit our booth, we will be trying to
change their preconceived idea of what centerless
grinding is.” —B.M.
■ M&S Centerless Grinding Inc.
www.msgrinding.com
Booth #2729
Go to http://www.imshome.com/mdrive
Go to http://www.imshome.com/mdrive
