[Pressure Molding] How Oertli, a medical device company, used pressure molding to create medical packaging prototypes within 24 hours.

In recent years, hardware manufacturers have discovered for the first time that outsourcing and rigid prototyping processes can have both positive and negative consequences. As a result, many manufacturers are turning to desktop manufacturing to regain control over the design of critical components that require maximum flexibility.

Malte Heuer is a Development Engineer and Product Manager at Oertli Instrumente AG . The company is headquartered in the Rhine Valley of St. Gallen, where it specializes in producing high-quality surgical instruments and medical devices for ophthalmic surgery. It exclusively develops and manufactures its products in the region to ensure Swiss quality, precision, and reliability.

Malte introduced the Mayku Multiplier and its pressure molding technology to the R&D and engineering departments. By adopting desktop pressure molding technology, Oertli demonstrated that in-house agile prototyping can significantly improve efficiency and output quality.
(Related article: [Thermoforming Applications] Vacuum Forming VS Pressure Forming: What's the Difference? We'll Tell You All About It! )

Oertli's R&D facility boasts a wide range of manufacturing technologies, including resin 3D printing, FDM 3D printing, and other prototyping equipment. Leveraging these expanding technologies, the company gains a competitive edge by designing, testing, and iterating at a faster pace every day.

From setbacks to innovation
Despite Oertli's significant investments in sustainability, innovation, and equipment improvements, hardware development still faces several challenges. Until recently, medical device packaging remained one of these challenges.

Within Oertli, the typical packaging prototyping process is very slow, requiring outsourcing of prototyping to the final thermoforming packaging supplier. Each design iteration takes 3 weeks, and each packaging component requires 2-6 design iterations.

The R&D team will design the packaging and use FDM 3D printing technology to create a limited visual prototype. This prototype will not be functional because the recessed areas under the packaging used to hold the components are not flexible enough to reduce the wall thickness, making it impossible for any 3D printing technology to print a functional prototype.

Once approved by the product management team, the design is sent to the packaging supplier, who will create a prototype in about three weeks. The functional prototype is then shipped back for testing by the customer, and feedback is collected. This process is repeated until the perfect design is found.

Introducing intelligent methods into manufacturing
This design iteration process was inefficient, so when Malte was in charge of prototyping medical packaging, he put his SCRUM Master skills to use to find a technology that could make prototyping faster. While searching for desktop but powerful thermoforming machines on Google, he discovered Multiplier, quickly saw its potential within Oertli, and purchased it.

Malte was able to easily integrate Multiplier into his existing prototyping workflow, retaining key, efficient steps and optimizing problematic ones. He still used Solidworks to design packaging prototypes. However, instead of using 3D printed visual prototypes for submission to the product management team and outsourcing to packaging suppliers, he used 3D printed thermoforming templates (related tutorial: [Pressure Molding] 12 Thermoforming Design Principles Every Beginner Should Know ). He then used Multiplier to create 3-10 high-fidelity prototypes and submitted them to the team and testers. All of this could be completed within a day.

"If product management proposes a small change in a meeting, it used to take three weeks to implement and schedule an update meeting. Now, the change can be made in one day, and a meeting can be scheduled for the next day, with everyone remembering the details of yesterday's meeting." - Malte Heuer - Development Engineer and Product Manager, Oertli Instrumente AG

Due to the requirements of high-fidelity prototyping, Malte decided to use a pressure forming machine like the Mayku Multiplier . The evaluation design required tolerances of ±0.1 mm, a level of precision that other techniques, such as vacuum forming, could not achieve.

Return on investment for internal pressure forming
By introducing high-fidelity prototyping in-house, Oertli has been able to remain innovative and agile. They can respond to engineering needs and team feedback almost instantly, without any of the waste or inefficiency typically faced by hardware manufacturers when prototyping.

"The rapid cycle times that started with software have now extended to the entire mechanical division." - Malte Heuer, Development Engineer and Product Manager, Oertli Instrumente AG

By using a multiplier, Oertli reduced its design iteration cycle from three weeks to one day. They also reduced prototyping costs by over 90% while still producing high-fidelity prototypes. They can now prototype in-house, giving them complete control over the entire process.

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