TPT July 2010

T echnology U pdate

Stent cutting system with femtosecond laser advance

Reconditioned second-hand machinery FRANZ Teutenberg GmbH & Co KG was founded in 1966, and since then has specialised in the worldwide purchase and sale of first-class, fully reconditioned second- hand machinery and complete installations for the production and treatment of semi- finished steel and non-ferrous wires, bars, tubes, sheets, strips and plates. The company carries equipment from a wide range of major manufacturers, and stocks more than 100 special machines in a floor area of around 3,000m². The company can also offer new or hardly used machines that have been sold by their previous owners owing to reorganisation measures or company liquidations. The special-purpose production machines and installations can still give many years of service, enabling consider- able savings in capital expenditure. The company can provide detailed quotations, and also invites enquiries for machines not mentioned in its stock list, as it acts as agent for the sale of large-scale plants still standing on their owners premises. Franz Teutenberg GmbH & Co KG – Germany Fax: +49 2154 9579 29 Email: info@teutenberg-maschinen.com Website: www.teutenberg-maschinen.com

THE new StarCut Tube Femto is one of the first systems to offer cold laser cutting for medical device manufacturing. Femtosecond lasers process materials faster than energy can diffuse within the atomic lattice. Therefore no heat is transferred to the surrounding material, which eliminates any recast and burr. The StarCut Tube Femto integrates a compact laser source with field-proven high reliability and long-term stability – properties that are essential for industrial manufacturing but have been hard to find in ultra-fast laser sources. Manufacturing of medical devices from tube stock typically relies on laser fusion cutting with pulse widths in the μs-scale. Even with an optimum setup this cutting process is not free from burrs and recast inside the tube. Thus post-processing of stainless steel and CoCr requires ultrasound polishing. The nitinol material (memory shape alloy) is prone to chemical and mechanical damage during post-processing in many cases. With femtosecond lasers, post-processing is shortened to a simple ultrasound cleaning. This improves post- processing efficiency, in particular with these sensitive materials. Bio-absorbable stents are at the heart of numerous research and development activities, but the use of bio-absorbable polymers like polylactic acid and polyglycolic

acid suffer from their low melting points, making them difficult to machine with traditional cutting lasers. The large heat affected zone was responsible for heavy micro structural changes. In contrast, femtosecond lasers have already achieved excellent results with vascular stents, showing high-precision edge quality. The StarCut Tube Femto mechanics were adapted to the specific requirements for handling thin-walled, mechanically fragile semi-finished products. The established StarCut18 and StarFiber laser remain state- of-the-art choices for stainless steel and metallic alloy cutting. Rofin/Baasel Lasertech – Germany

Fax: +49 8151 776 4159 Email: sales@baasel.de Website: www.rofin.com

StarCut Tube Femto for processing polymer and metal tubing

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J uly 2010

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