Philippe PERRET
FORGINAL medical
+33 (0)6 32 28 20 50
philippe.perret@forginal.com
OUR COMMITMENT TO QUALITY
FORGINAL medical is a pioneer in the medical device subcontracting market, and was one of the first orthopaedic implant manufacturers in France to achieve ISO 13485 certification for medical devices. We have been totally focussed for more than 30 years on achieving zero defects and an impeccable quality of finish for your forged implants.
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Medical tooling development
Tooling manufacture
Over the years FORGINAL medical has gradually developed a set of technical rules to reduce design faults on parts and to optimise the cost and the time is takes to make each tool. All tools are manufactured in-house.
There are general design rules for forging tooling, as well as rules for each type of part and also for each type of forging machine.
- Operator safety
- Tool design to prevent displacement during forging
- Optimisation of the flow of the material
- Reduction of the parting lines
With this knowledge, we have perfect control of the time it takes to make the tool, of safety during manufacture and of the quality of drop forged implants.
Composition of a hot forging tool
Inserts
Parts of the tool in which a there is generally a rough forged and finish-forged implant. These inserts are mounted directly on our drop hammers. Due to their modular design, we can guarantee manufacture with a lead time of 3 to 4 weeks.
Trimming tooling or punches
This part of the tooling is used to cut off the flash (the part of the material remaining around the part after forging). This is particularly important as it is this which will define the parting line (remaining border of material corresponding to the location where the part has been cut).
Specific tools
For each part and specification there must be a complete set of tools for the various operations set out in the production process :
- Machining fixtures
- Inspection gauge
- Bending tools
- Marking dies
Drop hammers
FORGINAL medical manufactures its own insert holders, tool carriers and weights for its drop hammers in-house.
Drop hammers give much thinner parting lines than on presses. This is associated with hammering directly on the inserts, which is not possible on a press.
The gross raw material weights (total amount of material required to make a part) are therefore lower because the parting lines are thinner, and so we need less material to forge a part.
Quality control of our tools
The quality system established at FORGINAL medical covers the in-house manufacture and testing of tools.
- They are tested before being sent to the forge using profile projectors, roughness meters and depth gauges.
- The traceability of each tool, including the origin of the raw material from which it is made, the various operations in the manufacturing process and the capability of the tool in terms of number of parts.
These tests ensure the optimum quality of our tools and ensure their continuous improvement so that we can offer you ever improving capabilities, much longer service lives for tools, but above all repeatability when producing your products with a controlled dispersion so that your machining operations run smoothly.
Tests prior to forging :
Each tool is tested before the series production of a range of prostheses is started.
These checks are carried out on the new tools produced for our customers’ new projects, and also on existing tools which have been redesigned in-house in the context of continuous quality improvement.