Wittmann Battenfeld UK helps TML produce Covid-fighting PPE equipment in record time

Wittmann Battenfeld (WIBA) UK has collaborated with Thornbury Manufacturing Limited (TML) to produce Covid-fighting PPE equipment in record time.

The Plymouth-based TML’s medical and healthcare work has been steadily expanding to the point where it now comprises some 44 per cent of total business and its ISO 13485 qualification (2016) was renewed some two years ago. 

A significant order - via UK Government sources - came in for a new design of face shield; design-for-manufacture and production services were urgently needed.

Both TML’s material supplier, Distrupol, and its toolmaker Mouldtech Solutions Paignton, all joined forces to provide a service the public needed.

TML’s founding experiences on the automotive supply-side immediately came into play in terms of the need for extensive production and process validations, CAP (dimensional) studies and ongoing inspections and other protocols for the new item.

TML Founder and Managing Director, Dick Walsh, said: “The timeline for tools for this emergency was set at just 21 days. The material used to make the tools was P20 steel, on the soft side but good enough for our purposes as we were moulding a medical grade of polypropylene.”

Walsh recalls that six workstations were then set up. Full work instructions and operator training were then achieved within a couple of days. The first 5,000 sets of Face Shield packs were packed in four working days.

Walsh says having carried over fifty of these medical validations we have found that the repeatability of the new Wittmann Battenfeld Machines are so good that any variation whatsoever on part dimension can be attributed to operator measuring error rather than machine variation.

TML was able not only to validate and mould key items but to also deploy the six work stations to also assemble the face shields and to then sanitise and double bag them for despatch

Investment in new Battenfeld injection moulding machinery and other equipment has helped TML to raise its production volumes in recent months. “We value our partnership with Wittmann Battenfeld UK,’ notes Walsh. ‘Our customers and clients expect continuous and fault free engineering and production from TML – and these are the qualities that we also find in our growing fleet of Battenfeld injection moulding machines.”