Producing 22 million quality implants

The medical and dental implants sector requires optimal and fast production, but it also requires extreme precision of each component. Regina Bosch, general manager of Medical Precision Implants (MPI) discusses the company’s precision work.

“Medical Precision Implants was founded in 2008 – with support from its parent company Nagamohr – to supply the dental implant and prosthetic market. MPI currently has 150 employees and manufactures 22 million implants a year.

“Some years ago, MPI set to improve its traditional measurement methods where all parts were measured with profile projectors, micrometers, and calipers, and this took the technicians a considerable amount of time. As we wanted to optimize the throughput and the technician’s working times, we decided to develop an optimization in this field together with Sariki, VICIVISION’s official reseller in Spain who’s still supporting MPI in this effort since our inception. They helped us by proposing to measure our parts with VICIVISION, which is a machine specialized in small parts control. We have been able to optimize times and improve quality.

“The fit between implant and connections is essential in the implant sector, as there should be no gaps between surfaces. Thanks to the VICIVISION machine we have been able to achieve this goal.”

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Bosch explains that it’s a very complete machine that has brought MPI many benefits, mainly because it’s placed in production and operators have direct access to the machine, measuring parts every 20 minutes.

Once the machine is programmed, the operator simply places the part and presses the button, identifying all the required measurements. In and out of tolerance quotes are color-coded with red and green labels.

Saving time isn’t the only advantage that VICIVISION has brought to MPI.

“Another great advantage is that it is much more reliable than the traditional measurement methods. In addition, automatic saving ensures traceability preventing data loss.”

Even though the introduction of a new machinery may appear to be burdensome in terms of time and effort, Bosch explains that implementation of the VICIVISION machines was extremely smooth and linear way, allowing them to work at full capacity in a short time.

“The first phase was the training of our designated project team by Sariki. It took several days, all questions and issues were addressed, clearing any doubts and allowing full comprehension of the machine.

“The next phase was fundamental: development of the holding fixtures. As these parts are so small, it’s important to position them exactly the same each and every time. Once these fixtures were produced, the next step was to develop all the programs on the machine for all our part numbers. It took us between one and two weeks, due to the large quantity of parts we have. In the end it was carried out successfully.”

“Our next step was the training of our internal staff. The operators were trained by our team. Today, they can measure nearly all the required parts.”

“Data saving was the last phase; automatic data collection is done to have a correct and 100% accurate traceability. In this way, the operators do not waste time by writing things down by hand.

“We have a very good and wide experience with VICIVISION and Sariki. We currently have four VICIVISION machines: three in Nagamohr and one in MPI. I believe that this speaks for the machine’s effectiveness.”