When a component of medical equipment needs bending, it is most likely that all of its ends either it’s a tube or a wire have machined features and sometimes another machined feature is found along its length. In this case, the component needs these features to be present once it is reflected in a three dimensional manner. Meaning if a tube that was bent has a slot or a hole in it then another of the component must have the same feature in order for them to connect. The cost of creating this feature after the component has been bent will be quite high compared to when the feature is added before the bending is done. This is the good thing about modern CNC wire benders and tube benders because features can be added before the bending is done but it is retained as the part is gradually bent making the process easier. This gives designers more freedom which makes them able to create more innovations and they know they can create intricate designs with the help of this CNC wire and tube benders. In some cases, additional tools may be needed in order to make the needed shapes.
Tubes can now customized either in 2D or 3D form and they are available in various diameters, the same goes for the wire. There are also many options when it comes to component lengths and there are various materials to choose from such as titanium, L605, stainless steel, MP35N and other metals.
With these technologies, designers can now create more innovation and advance medical equipment with intricate components such as orthopedic equipment, spine components which can be implanted into the patient, introducers and many more medical equipment. All of these are now possible to manufacture and prototypes can be easily made with assistance from third party manufacturers.
There are other processes that can now be easily done when manufacturing medical components such as CNC milling, CNC precision bending, wire EDM, electro polishing and CNC Swiss machining. Once the tubes and wires are bent, there are many features that can be added to the component. Wires can also be manufactured with various needle tips when the need arises such as bullet points, taper points and trocar points.