Industrial design and development company Worrell and ‘3-D printing’ equipment manufacturer Stratasys Ltd, are teaming up to promote the use of 3-D printed injection moulds to medical-device manufacturers.

They will jointly attend international trade shows and host a series of workshops to educate the medical industry on the process and demonstrate its impact on manufacturing.

Worrell CEO Kai Worrell said: “We were recently approached by medical-device company MedTG to design and engineer a dual-flow needle-less blood collection system that reduced the need for multiple injections, thereby increasing patient comfort and hospital efficiency.”

According to both companies, using 3-D printed injection mould tooling instead of traditional aluminium moulds mean that prototypes can be moulded in final production materials 95% faster and for 70% less cost.

Traditional tooling is both costly and time-consuming, as new moulds must be created every time a prototype is refined before manufacturing. To reduce potential iteration risks and tooling costs, Worrell uses Stratasys’ PolyJet-based 3-D printers to create injection moulding tools; it then uses the same material that will be used in a finished medical device to produce totally accurate and fully functional prototypes.