Cardiff-based
ATL Technology is a specialist manufacturer of medical devices, particularly energy-driven surgical devices. These are used in minimally invasive surgery and use low-voltage, high-current RF energy waveforms to seal, coagulate, dissect, vaporise, resect, or mobilise tissue. Typical applications are in urology, gynaecology, and arthroscopy.
As a company committed to delivering tailored products for specific medical applications, ATL Technology collaborates closely with surgeons throughout the design and production process. To ensure rapid development and timely completion of projects, continuous prototyping plays a crucial role. This approach is essential due to the stringent requirements for quality, repeatability, reliability, and cleanliness inherent in medical device development.
ATL Technology in Cardiff uses two toolrooms to produce prototyping tooling, jigs, fixtures for production, specialised in-house machinery for assembly and disassembly, and spare parts to maintain the special-purpose production assembly line. The R&D Toolroom initially invested in an XYZ SMX 2500 bed milling machine in 1997. Over time, its capabilities have expanded with the addition of a 660 HD vertical machining centre, a 1340 lathe, and an XYZ 500 LR vertical machining centre featuring linear rail technology.
Meanwhile, the Maintenance Toolroom features an RLX 1630 lathe, an XYZ 1500 manual turret mill, and an XYZ RMX 2-OP, which specialises in machining light alloy and plastic parts from stock materials. The recent acquisition of an XYZ 500 TMC three-axis vertical machining centre in March this year further demonstrates ATL Technology’s longstanding association with supplied by Devon-based
XYZ Machine Tools.
Discussing the attributes of the XYZ 500 TMC, Stephen Green, process development engineer, said: “The XYZ 500 TMC has a larger working area which enables us to machine the bigger mould tools, jigs, and fixtures in-house, which we were previously sub-contracting out. It has more power, a 12kW spindle — which is ideal for small tools and through-tool coolant.”
He continued: “This makes it easy to machine tool steels for injection mould tooling and electrodes for die sinking. It is also good at deep hole drilling and delivering faster material removal rates. With sub-contracting, it took many weeks to deliver a tool but we can now we can produce an entire tool within a week, or a single part to repair a production line breakdown within 24hr.”
Prototype partsFor ATL Technology, the ability to rapidly produce prototype parts using metal injection moulding sintering techniques from 17PH powder with an ABS substrate, is crucial. The quick iteration and lifecycle testing of prototypes play a significant role in refining product designs to meet the specific requirements of health professionals while ensuring manufacturability.
The XYZ 500 TMC's ProtoTRAK control provides ATL Technology’s engineers with a convenient way to program parts directly in the workshop. Additionally, CNC programs for prototype parts are mostly generated offline in Autodesk FeatureCAM from CAD models supplied by the product development team. The ProtoTRAK control allows engineers to verify the program, enabling them to review and correct any errors before machining begins.
Ashley Gardiner, toolroom technician, emphasised the machine’s versatility. He said: “90% of our work is one-off, small batches or spares, and the 12 tool pockets on the 500 TMC are sufficient for most of our needs. With this machine, we have increased our capacity to rapidly develop new devices and keep our production lines operating. Generally, we are looking for ±50µm. With the TMC, we can achieve ±10µm and, using the probe on the machine, we can also do in-process checking to ensure the part is correct before we take it off.”
To accommodate the XYZ 500 TMC in the Maintenance toolroom, XYZ Machine Tools had to dismantle the machine entirely to fit it through the door, and then meticulously reassemble and test it to ensure the machine’s functionality, accuracy, and reliability. Overall, the 500 TMC’s adaptability and XYZ Machine Tools' reliability have made the partnership invaluable to ATL Technology.
Moreover, the integration of the XYZ 500 TMC has significantly enhanced ATL Technology's medical device development capabilities. The company’s ability to rapidly prototype, create specialised high precision components in-house has enabled ATL Technology to stay at the forefront of medical device innovation, ensuring the delivery of cutting-edge products to meet the needs of its healthcare customers.