Automatic production of pipettes — with safety and flexibility

Waldorf Technik GmbH & Co. KG, the specialist for automation and injection moulding peripherals, offers automation systems for medical technology, especially for in-vitro diagnosis applications. Pipette tips and plastic containers for blood samples (cups) are difficult parts, which are used in analysis devices respectively for the diagnosis. They have to perform to the highest quality demands — clean and safe for patient protection but, at the same time, deliver exact repeatability and the production process must be economical for the manufacturers.

Hence, the modern injection moulding technology has developed sophisticated clean room applications for the mass production of these “disposables” — and Waldorf delivers compatible automation concepts. The term “manpower-less production” is hereby realised in order to exclude sources for errors as far as possible and to keep clean rooms clean.

Disposables — one way pipettes and plastic containers — must be sterile and immaculate; they should not have any scratches or asymmetries, unsatisfactory transparency, black spots, changes to dimensions or flash formations in order not to falsify analysis results. Thus, the production equipment must be constructed to the highest safety level in order not to endanger humans or to loose whole production batches. The clean room technology of the diagnostics manufacturers contributes in their part to the required production safety.

The quality-assured automation of the follow-up process respectively the sterile handling and packing of the moulded parts is an integral factor. This requires a high level of competence. Waldorf Technik provides the important know-how. In addition to making complex robot hardware in injection moulding peripherals, Waldorf has many years of experience in the project stages of FMEA, design reviews, factory acceptance tests and site acceptance tests, as well as being a partner in qualification and validation and for preventive risk management as a core assessment for system project engineering. All this places Waldorf Technik ahead of the game.

A developed automation system of this kind — with optical in-line control against system and sporadic mistakes — has been supplied from Waldorf Technik to the leading European suppliers of tips and cups in varied system versions. For example, one supplier produces tips or cups with 32 cavity tools. The associated automation systems divide the “disposables” into 32 separate racks direct after take-out. Each has a capacity of 96 or 60 finished parts out of the same cavity.

Quality risks and production process hazards are further eliminated by the integrated camera control at the control stations. The flexible production variation — mixed rack with half tip and half cup collection — enables a 100% production performance of the injection moulding machines without having to store much stock. As a result, suppliers to the MedTec market experience an economically positive development thanks to such high automation levels. Waldorf’s automised system concepts deliver attractive profit and amortisation periods.