Liquid Silicone Rubber (LSR) Moulding and Multicomponent

Today’s medical device designers and manufacturers operate in a challenging landscape. Stricter regulations and the need for biocompatibility are making development and manufacturing more demanding. Add to that, user requirements for devices that suit their lifestyle choices, such as wearable products and home monitoring solutions, and you can understand why engineers are looking for novel component options. One solution is liquid silicone rubber (LSR) moulding and multicomponent manufacturing. LSR is a stable and adaptable material that’s accelerating innovations in medical device design, facilitating to make devices more robust, efficient, and adaptable to patients’ needs. Silicone is ideal for medical devices and equipment, not only because it’s inert, biostable and biocompatible, but also because it can be processed in many ways. It can be moulded on its own, but the real magic happens when it is combined during the moulding process with engineered plastics and other substrates in what is termed ‘multicomponent manufacturing’. This technology produces a single component, instead of separate parts that require assembly, and offers the medical device manufacturer several advantages. It reduces production costs and supply chain expenses associated with stocking and handling multiple parts. The single, integrated device has greater integrity and, for example, allows the elimination of undesirable spaces for bacteria growth, increasing patient safety. For new multicomponent LSR applications, it is important to involve the component manufacturer as early as possible in the development process, ideally from the concept stage. Some moulders, take a black box approach in which the designer specifies the component’s function, performance, and regulatory requirements, along with the available design window. The moulder then develops a proposal that includes the benefits of LSR processing.