Cryogenic Deflashing & Deburring for the Medical Device Industry

Since the turn of the New Year, we have seen an influx of medical customers seeking cryogenic deflashing for molded parts and cryogenic deburring for machined parts. These two services can eliminate those strings, residual fibers, hanging burrs, and excess flash from medical devices prior to final inspection and shipment.

However, many questions arise as to how our process works and if it will adversely affect the medical customers’ parts. Two main concerns of our medical customers are cleanliness and structural deterioration of their parts. I would like to address these concerns as it is important for medical consumers to know their manufacturing processes very well.

Our cryogenic deflashing and deburring process removes excess flash and burrs; that is all that it does. Your surface finish will not be affected. Your parts will look exactly the same as they did when you shipped them, except they will be flash and burr free. One of the beauties of cryogenic deflashing and deburring is that all the small cross-holes and inner part geometries will be clean of flash and burrs thanks to media as small as 0.015”. After the process is complete, a post-tumble usually lasting less than a minute is initiated. This helps remove all the excess media from the parts. We can also clean your parts after the cryogenic deflashing or deburring is complete. We use mild and medium surfactants to remove residual media, flash, and burrs. This process helps remove surface tension from the parts as well.

Now it is important to address the structural deterioration issue. First, cryogenic deburring or deflashing will not cause your parts to fail any earlier. We run our processes above material freeze temperatures or at them. We never go lower than the freeze temperature. Cryogenic deflashing and deburring requires that the flash and burrs be frozen in order to remove them. That is why we have to go down to cold negative temperatures. Some medical customers are misled into believing that liquid nitrogen touches the parts. This is not the case; rather liquid nitrogen is converted into gaseous nitrogen which then cools the chamber were the parts have been inserted. Our deburring and deflashing cycles usually last no more than twenty minutes. Therefore, it is not long enough a time to cause structural deterioration that could shorten the life of medical parts.

For more information about cryogenic deflashing, please look at http://www.nitrofreeze.com/services/deflashing/cryogenic-deflashing-using-blast-media/. For information regarding cryogenic deburring navigate to http://www.nitrofreeze.com/services/deburring/cryogenic-blast-deburr/. If you have any questions about deflashing or deburring for medical parts, please call us at (800)-739-7949 or email us at info@nitrofreeze.com. Call us today to send us your samples.