Drake Medical Plastics supplies Solvay Ixef PARA rod

Solvay’s Ixef polyarylamide (PARA) is now globally available in rod stock from its channel partner, Drake Medical Plastics.

The medical-grade Ixef PARA stock shapes can be precisely machined to create appearance prototypes of single-use orthopedic surgical instruments.

This approach avoids the considerable time and expense of producing soft tooling. Once the part design is finalised, device manufacturers can fully leverage the performance properties of Solvay’s Ixef PARA resin using injection moulding.

These materials have been evaluated for ISO 10993 limited-duration biocompatibility and are supported by a U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) Master Access File (MAF).

Ixef PARA is optimised for sterilisation using high-energy gamma radiation without causing significant change in appearance or performance.

The company believes for single-use orthopedic surgical instruments, injection moulded Ixef PARA now delivers performance comparable to that of traditional stainless steel, but without the drawbacks.

The 50-percent glass fibre-reinforced resins feature good rigidity, creep resistance, and strength required to withstand mechanical strain and stress. However, they are up to 450 percent lighter than metal, enabling OEMs to increase the number of tools in a surgical instrument kit.

Steven Quance, Drake Medical’s President, said: “Ixef PARA shapes address the need for more-efficient prototyping that can help OEMs control development costs and accelerate time to market for new single-use surgical instruments and other devices. Designers can quickly and easily create visual prototypes that give an accurate representation of their final product. We have found that immediate access to high quality stock shapes in leading-edge materials like Ixef PARA helps customers meet new project objectives of speed, cost and design.”