New Mechanical Microdrilling Technology Targets Catheter Manufacturers

A mechanical microdrilling technique developed by Hitachi Via Mechanics for high-volume applications enabled the formation of 10,000 100-µm-diam through holes on a 0.5-mm-thick wafer.

Microdrilling techniques developed by Hitachi Via Mechanics may represent a cost-effective alternative to laser-based drilling of catheters. The technology allows the high-volume production of through holes measuring 100 µm diam and smaller in PVC and Ultem materials and in various compounds routinely used in the medical device industry.

Engineers from Hitachi Via Mechanics in the United States and Japan collaborated on the development of the technology, which has been applied to the ND-1S single-spindle modular system with vision and ND-Q six-spindle production level micro-hole mechanical drilling system. The latter is compatible with various fixtures to suit different part configurations.

The microholes can be drilled in a variety of polymer sheet, tube and composite materials used in industries ranging from microelectronics packaging to medical devices. The HVM team demonstrated the system’s capabilities by forming 10,000 100-µm-diam through holes on a 0.5-mm-thick cast polyimide wafer (see accompanying image). The demo successfully showed that many existing laser processes used to drill high-density hole arrays could be replaced by a simpler mechanical method at about one-fifth the cost, according to the firm.

Mechanical drilling processes are especially effective in applications that suffer from surface or material thickness variations, since a mechanical tool defines the hole size, instead of the focal position of a lens, notes Hitachi Via Mechanics.

Tags: catheters, Hitachi Via Mechanics, microdrilling