MEDICAL
MINCO PRODUCTS FOR USE IN MEDICAL DEVICES
From In Vivo to In Vitro diagnostic devices (IVDs), to surgical applications, to electronic implants – Minco flex circuits, heaters, sensors and control electronics prove themselves when accuracy, repeatability, reliability and compact size are vital.
Focused on your success
Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) are faced with increasing demands for:
- Smaller and more portable diagnostic devices with uncompromising accuracy.
- Devices with increased throughput and highly complex interconnect requirements.
A history of growing with medical OEMs
Medical breakthroughs are occurring faster than ever before. That’s why leading OEMs rely on Minco’s more than 50 years of experience to sharpen their competitive edge. Minco is a direct supplier to the top cardiac device companies and serves as a Tier One supplier to over half of the leading medical IVD companies in the world.
Flex Circuits for Medical Devices
Inductive Coils for Medical Devices
High Density Interconnect Rigid-Flex allows designers to fold circuits in a 3-dimensional configuration to take advantage of the vertical space within a device.
Minco’s precision flex circuit technology allows us to specialize in fine lines, fine pitch, tight tolerances, small holes, lamination, and handling of fine diameter wire.
- Flexible 3-dimensional packaging – Flex circuits offer unlimited freedom of packing geometry while retaining the precision, density and repeatability of printed circuits.
- Compact and low mass – Reduce space and weight for optimal packaging and efficiency.
- Improved reliability – Compliant flex circuit materials minimize stress at solder joints and reduce the number of connection interfaces.
Wire telemetry coil is integrated into a flexible circuit to enable external communications for programming and serves as a secondary dielectric barrier.
- Inductive coils enable communications telemetry and recharging in medical implants.
- Flex-CoilsTM and their connections are typically encapsulated inside the laminated flex circuit body, making them less prone to breakage than discrete coils. No matter the design challenges, Minco engineers bring best practices from hundreds of similar projects worldwide to help our partners plan and design the best solutions for their medical systems.
Flexible Heaters for Medical Equipment
Minco uses a proprietary trimming method for the thin, flexible 384-hole Heater to achieve a tight hole-to-hole tolerance. This allows for almost perfect registration to the microtiter plate.
Thin, flexible heaters consist of an etched-foil (ThermofoilTM) or wire-wound resistive element laminated between layers of insulation material such as polyimide, silicone rubber, mica, polyester or PTFE.
- Superior thermal performance – Thermally efficient foil elements transfer heat for greater accuracy, faster warm-up, and increased throughput.
- Temperature uniformity – Heating elements can be profiled to offset variations in heat loss, ensuring a precise and consistent thermal system which achieves maximum yield.
- Compact and low mass – Thin profile reduces heater space requirements to improve medical device portability while optimizing efficiency.
- Flexible geometry – A wide variety of shape, termination and sensor options offer countless design alternatives for any application.
- Maximum reliability – Minco’s industry leading use of thin, high temperature materials maximize heater capability and device reliability.
The Thermofoil heater in an IV fluid warmer puts the heat where it’s needed, ensuring consistent and accurate media warming. Factory lamination provides a highly reliable, trouble-free heating solution.
Temperature Sensors for Medical Equipment
Averaging temperature sensors embedded in a vulcanized Thermofoil heater with profiled wattage distribution provide optimal surface area temperature control for maximum image resolution.
No matter the design challenges, Minco engineers bring best practices from hundreds of similar projects worldwide to help our partners plan and design the best solutions for their medical systems.
- Fast time response – Time constants as low as 0.10 second allow immediate situational analysis and efficient thermal control or condition reporting.
- Compact and low mass – Sensors can be packaged in small configurations for space savings.
- Versatile geometry – Minco sensors can be custom designed and manufactured to fit any shape and simplify installation.
The Thermal VialTM Temperature Sensing System encompasses a wire-wound RTD element capable of -200°C operation to provide accurate measurement and docu-mentation of freezing, process and storage methodology.
MEDICAL APPLICATIONS FOR MINCO PRODUCTS
- Polyimide Thermofoil heaters maintain the structure of the scanner at a constant temperature to eliminate expansion/contraction registration errors
- Polyimide Thermofoil heaters rapidly introduce heat into the superconducting environment to provide emergency shutdown of the magnetic field, and their small leadwires minimize the thermal leakage from the cryogenic environment during normal operation.
- Thermofoil heaters factory mounted to heat sinks and integrated with RTD temperature sensors process output from imaging systems onto dry silver film substrates for highly detailed hard copy used by doctors for analysis
- High-density flex circuits offer highly reliable interconnect circuitry between imaging modules rotating within MRI and PET/CT scanning devices
- Integrated flex circuit with control electronics links to the heater and sensor for a compact system package in point-of-care analyzers
- Wire-wound resistance thermometers accurately average temperature across critical surfaces for precise control
- Minco manufactures a combination heater/sensor/controller/flex circuit and assembles the sample carrousel that maintains accurate fluid temperature in this floor standing analyzer.
- Etched-foil heaters warm fluid samples and keep them at a constant temperature.
- Thin and lightweight etched-foil heaters allow the robotics in analyzers to seamlessly move without slowing down
transfer time. - Heater wraps entirely around pipettes for intimate coupling and tight temperature control.
- Flex circuits within the motor controls of surgical drills used in bone surgeries allow for flexible configuration and space savings to keep the device compact and easy to handle.
- Thermofoil heater in post-surgery respiratory device reliably warms and humidifies air, offering therapeutic value as well as improved patient comfort level.
- All-Polyimide heater in this dental surgery instrument provides high watt density heating of polymer cones to fuse and seal the tooth during root canals. The component assembly integrates a surface mount LED, control switches, and an RTD temperature sensor
- Thermofoil heaters in this IV fluid delivery system feature low mass and total surface coverage to meet the customer’s need for reliability and safety.
- RTD temperature sensor maintains IV fluids at a consistent 37°C for patient comfort and prevention of thermal shock.
- Temperature controllers and Thermofoil heaters operate from low voltage DC to eliminate current leakage for added patient safety.
Minco has custom products for use in several medical implant applications, including: pacemakers, defibrillators (ICD), cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT), heart assist/artificial heart (LVAD), neurological stimulation implants, hearing implants and infusion drug pumps.
- Flex-Coils communicate from the external component to the internal component of a middle-ear or cochlear hearing device.
- Rigid-flex motherboards provide signal processing in middle-ear and cochlear implants as well as external hearing aids.
- Multi-layer flex circuits allow for the miniaturization of the motherboards for implantable neurostimulators in the brain.
- Flex circuit inductive coil is used to recharge the power source.
- Flex-Coils are wire-wound inductors that Minco integrates with flex circuits to enable magnetic flux telemetry communication in cardiac devices.
- Flex-Coils combine telemetry coils with flexible or Rigid-Flex circuits including optional piezoelectric annunciators for audible alarms
RESOURCES FOR MINCO PRODUCTS USED IN MEDICAL DEVICES
LET'S TALK E2E
If you and your engineering team are ready to take the next step and explore powerful design innovation, Minco engineers are ready. Our thermal, flex circuit and sensing experts can help your team find a better way — minimizing costs, while improving overall system performance.
CASE STUDY: INTEGRATED SOLUTION FOR WOUND CAUTERIZATION
A medical device company was looking to create a highly differentiated solution to quickly cauterize exit wounds in femoral arteries. Using existing technology, wounds caused by the removal of catheters during heart procedures were taking hours to heal. To speed up the cauterization process, Minco integrated a flex circuit with a heater and sensor to create a highly reliable device that was able to reach a target temperature of 100 degree Celsius in less than six minutes. The new configuration not only improves cauterization speed, but it also improves reliability by reducing the number of failure points.
WANT MORE CASE STUDIES AND COLLABORATION TIPS?
Check out our integration ebook here
COLLABORATE WITH
ENGINEERS WHO GET IT
No matter the design challenges, Minco engineers bring best practices from hundreds of similar projects worldwide to help our partners plan and design the best solutions for their medical systems.
LET'S TALK E2E
If you and your engineering team are ready to take the next step and explore powerful design innovation, Minco engineers are ready. Our thermal, flex circuit and sensing experts can help your team find a better way — minimizing costs, while improving overall system performance.
