"Application Approaches

Areas that are coating-free are mission-critical in electrosurgical devices. Surgical Coatings utilizes a proprietary “virtual masking” process to ensure perfectly defined coating-free areas and eliminate poor edge quality, boosting overall surface quality. Virtual masking processes have continued to advance over the last two decades.

 

'Using automated laser systems, we can remove the coating from substrates in very specific and tight-tolerance areas, producing a perfect quality edge surrounding coating-free areas,' said Morris. 'This ensures flake-free edges and allows us to apply coatings on complex geometries. The automation behind these systems is critical to high-volume production and allows us to focus on coating applications, without wasting time on traditional masking procedures.'

Surgical Coatings has also developed a tunable corona discharge for electrostatic powder coatings. Although several powder-coating equipment manufacturers offer corona discharges to reduce back-ionization, orange peel, and other typical Faraday effects, “we found they did not perform well for the complex geometries and unique materials we often see in the medical device industry,” said Morris. 'Using our tunable corona discharge, we have been able to coat difficult materials onto especially complex geometries, while maintaining coating thickness tolerances ±0.0005” in some cases.'"

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