Real challenge.
Doctors make house calls, but there are no patients to see at Medtronic’s Sofamor Danek prototype lab. Instead they come to see their ideas for new surgical instruments become working prototypes with the help of FDM prototyping. With locations in Memphis, Tenn. and Rossi, France, Sofamor Danek is the world leader in spinal and cranial medical technologies.
“We often see one or two VIP surgeons per day,” says design engineer Richard Franks. “They come in with a problem to solve in the morning. They explain their need to an engineer, the engineer will model a solution on ProEngineer and then make a prototype. Often by the next morning we’ll have a prototype in their hands. Sometimes we even deliver the same day. Having the [Fortus] FDM (fused deposition modeling) machine in-house really makes it easy for us to design products.”
Sofamor Danek engineers recently designed a ratcheting counter-torque instrument that surgeons use to fasten set-screws to a corrective implant on a patient’s vertebrae. After the screws are fixed in place, the tool shears off the screw heads at a pre-set torque level. The existing method required surgeons to use separate tools, working them in opposing directions, using both hands. The result was often a violent impulse that occurred at the moment the screw head sheared off, and the surgeons wanted to eliminate that.
