Technology News

TECHNOLOGY NEWS: MANUFACTURING EQUIPMENT

To achieve higher throughput for medical device manufacturers, Mould & Matic Solutions GmbH (Micheldorf, Austria; www.mouldandmatic.com) has introduced a mould for test-tube closures that has twice the number of cavities than the previous model. The Austrian company unveiled its 96-cavity mould for med-tech applications at the recent Fakuma trade show in Friedrichshafen, Germany.

The mould has the most cavities of any tooling ever manufactured by Mould & Matic. The 750 × 600-mm-mould can produce 96 test-tube closures every six seconds. Because of the design, Greiner-Bio-One is able to produce close to 300 million test-tube closures annually, according to the toolmaker.

In addition to tooling for the closures, Mould & Matic makes moulds for the manufacture of petri dishes in single- or multiface designs. Depending on the number of cavities, the moulds can run with cycle times as fast as three seconds. Also available are moulds for test tubes in various designs, including products with round, flat, or conical bottoms; test tubes with screw tops; reaction tubes; pipette tip boxes; and multipurpose cups.

“We are putting a lot of emphasis on the maintainability of our moulds,” says project manager Christian Sageder. “And it is important to us that the moulds can be easily adjusted for customer-specific applications.”