Mack Molding Co. has been awarded as a supplier to the SnapPath 1000, the Silver Winner in the In Vitro Diagnostics category of the 2012 Medical Design Excellence Awards (MDEA) competition. The MDEA winning products, and their suppliers, were announced at a presentation ceremony held last week in Philadelphia in conjunction with the eastern Medical Design & Manufacturing Show.Manufactured by BioMarker Strategies (Baltimore, Md.), the SnapPath platform is an automated live tumor cell-processing instrument that helps medical oncologists determine the best treatment options for individual cancer patients.
Mack injection molds the disposable cartridge kit for the device out of polypropylene resin for reagent compatibility. The fully self-contained disposable cartridge houses all of the reagents and pipette tips required for single sample processing.
"Polypropylene has a higher shrink rate than most resins, which made consistent wall thickness critical in this part's design," says Randy Pell, Mack senior staff design engineer. "We worked extensively with the designer (HS Design, Gladstone, N.J.) on design-for-manufacturability issues to ensure correct wall thicknesses and flow pattern, to build a robust tool, and generally, to improve overall moldability. The base housing cartridge is the most difficult of the four parts to mold."
MDEA-winning products excel in the areas of product innovation, design and engineering achievement, end-user benefit, and cost-effectiveness in manufacturing and healthcare delivery. The winning entries were chosen by an impartial, multidisciplinary panel of third-party jurors with expertise in biomedical engineering, clinical practice, diagnostics, human factors, industrial design, manufacturing, and medicine.
"We are extremely proud to play a role in the manufacture of this product," says Jeff Somple, president of Mack Molding's Northern Operations. "This award program is the most prestigious in the industry for medical device design and innovation, so we are very honored to be a part of it."
