At the heart of the Manufacturing Process

The market for medical devices has grown at a considerable rate in Europe, representing over 20 billion euros in revenue. In 2013, France had more than one thousand ISO13485 certified manufacturers, compared to only one-hundred and forty-four ten years prior. The medical devices made today involves the machining of increasingly complex high value-added parts that drives manufacturers to evolve rapidly. In the city of Pessac near Bordeaux, France the managers of Rescoll Manufacturing have seized the opportunity for rapid growth in the medical sector using ESPRIT CAM software.

Historical Expertise

Rescoll Manufacturing was founded in 2001 as a private research laboratory providing chemical, mechanical, and physio-chemical expertise of materials. Most of Rescoll’s requests are to certify the conformity of those materials that make up aircrafts from Airbus. In the medical field, Rescoll tests many polymers, especially for implants. 

In 2012 Rescoll Manufacturing became ISO13485 certified as a dedicated manufacturer of medical devices. They also machined test tubes and tests fixtures specific to their company’s needs. Today, the Rescoll Manufacturing team dedicates most of their production time to the medical industry and the rest to the aeronautics and robotics sectors. Their manufacturing activity primarily focuses on dental or spine bolting, stems, and maxillofacial and cervical plates. In the future Rescoll intends to develop highly crafted medical parts such as intravenous implants or cages.

The essential turn to CAM software

Over the year’s manufacturers have been turning to Rescoll for projects that are increasingly complex. The projects they were receiving not only included simple turning operations, but also projects with complex parts requiring more 5-axis milling and surface finishing operations, making part programming increasingly difficult. In 2014 the managers at Rescoll decided to invest in a CAM software. "Our wish was to integrate a reliable CAM solution that could be adapted to our entire range of Swiss and 3-5 axis machines. We knew ESPRIT’s potential and the distributor Usin’concept reinforced our choice," explains Fabien Guillaume, methods manager.
 

Implant plate programmed with ESPRIT and machined in a single operation on a 5-axis lathe.

A rapid rise in productivity

Aware of the evolution of the medical market Rescoll managers then decided in 2015 to implement ESPRIT CAM and immediately train their programmers on ESPRIT’s turning, 5-axis milling, and multi-tasking modules. "After we began using ESPRIT by ourselves we quickly realized that the software offers us a lot of flexibility and possibilities when programing parts," says Fabien Guillaume. Rescoll’s programmers instantly started autonomously programing various 5-axis parts, and optimized the full use of their workshops CNC machines, rapidly increasing their productivity.

In addition, the Methods department also created a library of standard machining processes using ESPRIT to automate, facilitate and improve the generation of CNC programs. Process archiving and automatic shape recognition helped cutting tool managers fully utilize ESPRIT CAM’s functions for intelligent machining.

With production in the shop on the rise, Rescoll faced their latest challenge that involved programming a cervical plate with complex surfaces which required 5-axis machining on a milling lathe. With the help of EPSRIT CAM the Rescoll team could not only machine the part in just one operation, but also exactly meet the customer's expectations.

Capturing Evolving Markets

For Rescoll Manufacturing the integration of ESPRIT CAM software solved many machining difficulties related to tight tolerance intervals, weak machines, and refractory materials. "We had problems completing a grooving operation on a 3-axis machine, and ESPRIT allowed us to simply program the machine using trochoidal cutting movements which solved all our problems, " describes Frédéric Combarnous, head of Rescoll Manufacturing.

The growing experience of Rescoll’s programmers also made it possible to diversify the typology of parts and improve quality to extend their use. Moreover, the simulation integrated within ESPRIT clearly was an advantage for Rescoll to be able to visualize everything from the machine environment, to the machining of the part, to the possible interferences. This allowed them to correctly program the part quickly and easily. "ESPRIT is a very reliable tool that allows you to anticipate errors and optimize the set-up times on the machine," says Fabien Guillaume.

In the workshop, a dozen machines make it possible to machine complex parts in mill-turn.