What should I pay attention to when installing the injection manipulator to pick up the pieces in the customized injection processing of medical supplies?

It is a systematic project that clean production, material characteristics and precision technology need to be taken into account at the same time to customize the installation of injection manipulator for medical supplies injection processing. Medical consumables usually involve syringes, infusion sets, catheter joints, surgical instruments, drug delivery devices, etc., and the requirements for taking parts in its injection molding production are much higher than those of ordinary industrial plastic parts. Any link that is not strictly controlled may cause product pollution, deformation or process instability, which will further affect product quality and regulatory compliance. The following three dimensions: design planning before picking up parts, process control during picking up parts, and supporting environment and verification management, systematically sort out the key issues that need attention.

First, the design and selection considerations before picking up the parts

The first is the matching of cleanliness and material compatibility. Medical workshops are generally controlled according to the cleanliness of 100,000, 10,000 or even 100. The materials of the robot body, fixture, sucker and all parts in contact with products must meet the requirements of low dust emission, cleaning resistance and disinfection resistance. 304 or 316L stainless steel, anodized aluminum, food-grade or medical-grade engineering plastics and other materials are preferred, and the surface should be electroplated, sandblasted or specially coated to avoid rubbing off chips or electrostatic adsorption of dust particles during operation. It is forbidden to use ordinary grease to lubricate the surfaces that may come into contact with products. The selection of lubricants should meet the requirements of medical grade, low migration and high pressure sterilization resistance, so as to prevent the lubricating medium from migrating to the surfaces of products and causing pollution or biocompatibility risks.

Secondly, the way of taking parts and the design of fixture structure. Most medical products are thin-walled, small, fragile, with inverted buttons or easy to scratch, so the action of taking them must be gentle and accurate. Vacuum sucker, pneumatic gripper or special copying fixture should be selected according to the product structure, and medical silica gel or polyurethane should be selected as the sucker material to ensure stable adsorption without damaging the surface. For products that are easy to deform or stick to the mold, we can consider setting the time sequence of linkage between demoulding ejection and mechanical hand picking to avoid strain caused by forced pulling. The trajectory of the manipulator should be planned reasonably after taking the parts, so as to avoid the inertia impact caused by high-speed emergency stop and make the products fall or deform, and the arc transition should be used to smooth the acceleration and deceleration at the corner.

Second, the process control matters needing attention in the picking process

The position accuracy and repeated positioning accuracy of the manipulator are the core to ensure consistency. The dimensional tolerance of medical products is strict, the signal linkage between manipulator and injection molding machine should be stable and reliable, and the sensor signals such as confirmation of ejection completion and in-situ detection of products should be sensitive and accurate to prevent empty grasping, scratching deviation or scratching. When taking the parts, the residence time of the products in the mold should be shortened as far as possible, and the ejection temperature and cooling time should be well controlled to avoid warping or uneven shrinkage of the products due to uneven temperature. For products that need subsequent processing, functional modules such as nozzle cutting, inspection, sorting and stacking can be integrated at the end of the manipulator to realize the integrated operation after picking up the parts and reduce the risk of secondary pollution caused by manual contact.

In addition, the motion speed and acceleration parameters of the manipulator should be set according to the product characteristics. Medical thin-walled parts are sensitive to impact, so it is necessary to reduce the speed of taking parts and cooperate with flexible buffering to ensure that the whole process of products coming out of the cavity and being placed in the conveying line or material box is free from bumps and scratches. The placement posture of products should be unified and standardized to avoid deformation caused by stacking and extrusion, and the material box or tray should be made of dust-free and antistatic materials.

Iii. Matters needing attention in environment, safety and verification management

The manipulator installation in the clean workshop should consider the space layout, the interference distance with the injection molding machine, and the maintenance and operation space. At the same time, the equipment shell should be well sealed, and the electrical components and driving parts should adopt the protection level that meets the requirements of cleanliness to avoid dust accumulation or breeding microorganisms. As the power source of pneumatic system, compressed air must undergo degreasing, water removal, dust removal and efficient filtration, and the cleanliness level should meet the technological requirements to prevent gas from polluting products.

Safety protection can not be ignored either. Safety fence, grating or safety door interlock device should be set in the manipulator operation area to meet the safety standards of relevant equipment to prevent people from entering into the workplace and causing injuries; The control program should have perfect safety logic such as emergency stop, alarm and reset, and can stop in time to protect equipment and products under abnormal conditions.

On the quality management level, the injection molding production of medical supplies must follow the requirements of GMP and ISO 13485 system. As a key process, manipulator picking process needs to complete the confirmation and verification after equipment installation, including installation confirmation, operation confirmation and performance confirmation, record key data such as picking success rate, positioning accuracy, product yield and surface quality, and form traceable process documents. For the risk points such as particles and lubricant residues that may occur in the process of picking up parts, a cleaning and verification cycle should be established, and dust particles should be detected and surface cleanliness should be confirmed regularly. At the same time, the preventive maintenance plan of the manipulator is established, and the wearing parts, seals and suction cups are regularly inspected and replaced to ensure the stability and consistency of long-term operation.

In a word, the manipulator of medical supplies injection molding should not only pay attention to speed and automation, but also focus on cleanliness, precision and compliance, and strictly control the whole process from selection design, process control, environmental safety to verification management, so as to ensure that medical products can continuously meet the quality and regulatory requirements while producing efficiently.