The Medical Device Business Journal — Medical Device News & Articles | MassDevice
We’re curious to hear your comments and feedback, so we compiled a quick, five-question survey to get input from you. We thought you may be curious about how other medical device companies go about testing their products, so we plan on publishing the results in our next post.
Are you outsourcing your testing? Do you perform tests according to standards or do you create your own testing profiles? What do you need or want for a testing system? Let us know:
ADMET Micro EP Universal Testing System:
Is the thought of test equipment being too expensive or too hard to operate, holding you back from offering this service to your customers?
When asked, will you perform the mechanical property testing of a prototype or finished product, do you refer to a 3rd party test lab? You could be generating revenue by offering testing. Many times a simple tensile test, compression test, or torsion test is all that is needed.
How to set up your business to get ready for testing.
Accurate mechanical testing requires not only familiarity with measurement systems, but also some understanding of the planning, execution, and evaluation of experiments. Much experimental equipment is often “homemade,” especially in smaller companies where the high cost of specialized instruments cannot always be justified. If the designer of the “homemade” equipment does not carefully consider how the design functions under test conditions, then the stress vs. strain diagram may be in error.
ACCURACY, REPEATABILITY, RESOLUTION
The terms below are commonly referenced in the world of materials testing. Many of these definitions are taken from ASTM E6 Standard Terminology Relating to Methods of Mechanical Testing.
Ductility: The ability of a material to deform plastically before fracture.
Elastic limit: The greatest stress that a material is capable of sustaining without any permanent deformation remaining upon complete release of stress.
Nanocomposites are typically polymer-based materials in which the microstructure and mechanical behavior are tailored via the incorporation of additives or nanometer-sized particles. They have significantly enhanced mechanical performance, as well as other properties such as electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and resistance to permeability and abrasion.
UMass Biomechanical Research Relies on ADMET
• Hysteresis is the maximum difference in sensor output between measurements made from 0 to 100% full scale output (FSO) and from 100 to 0% FSO. Although hysteresis is easily measured, its mechanism is not fully understood.
Whether you are in medical device production or R&D testing, mechanical property testing is a critical step in ensuring the quality of your product. Unfortunately, the testing process can be expensive and time consuming. Some companies hire specialized engineers to maintain large and expensive pieces of testing equipment, others decide to outsource their testing needs to laboratories that may or may not understand the needs of your customers. At ADMET, we decided to make mechanical testing easy and affordable.
