Implanting technology

Typical materials processed on the Haas machines include 17/4 stainless steel, 400- and 300-series stainless steel, titanium, cobalt chrome, and PEEK (polyether ether ketone).

Before he founded his company 40 years ago, Fran Phillips was a lone machinist – a hands-on guy with a mill and a lathe during the space-race era, when NASA was spending liberally to make JFK’s promise a reality, and every willing and able machine shop in the country could benefit. One of the parts Fran made at that time is said to be still on the moon, precisely where the Apollo astronauts left it. By contrast, one of the parts he made more recently – just as out-of-reach, but much closer to home – lodges precisely and in perpetuity in his own spine. Like many thousands of patients around the world, Fran Phillips lives with an implant made on Haas CNC machine tools by Elmwood, N.J.-based Phillips Precision Medicraft (PPM).

PPM is a recognized leader in the manufacture of advanced orthopedic implants, instrumentation, and sterilized delivery systems. Located less than 20 miles from New York City, the company uses 40 Haas Automation Inc. (Oxnard, Calif.) CNC milling machines and 6 Haas CNC turning centers, and specializes in implants for the knee, hip, elbow, shoulder, and spine, as well as the instrumentation and tooling necessary to install such devices in the body.

“We purchased our first Haas mill in 1992, and have continued investing in Haas technology ever since,” states John Phillips, Fran’s eldest son and PPM’s president of operations. “Standardizing on the Haas platform makes it easier to schedule work, and to move employees from machine to machine.”

PPM provides a made-to-order service for orthopedic industry customers that include Stryker, Zimmer, and Biomet, to name but a few. The company’s machining capability helps facilitate a complete art-to-part offer, using Haas Super VF series mills and SL series turning centers.

“We have had Haas machines for the past 20 years, but we have retired only a few,” John says. “Most of them run 20 hours a day, but still produce the same quality as when they were new. We certainly get our money’s worth. In our opinion, the ratio of performance to price offered by Haas cannot be matched.”

PPM is not making commodity parts; the components produced on the long lines of neatly laid out machines contain high precision, high-complexity features.

“Take this hip broach, for example,” John says, holding a part approximately 10" long with tapered cutting-tooth geometry at one end, transposing to hexagon geometry at the other. “It would normally be produced on a CNC grinding machine, but we use Haas fourth-axis and right-angle head technology to introduce a tool at such an angle and high rpm that we are able to simulate a 5-axis application, producing the broach with a tool geometry that cannot be duplicated using grinding technology. The resulting broach offers a very aggressive cutting-tooth design, which the doctors love, because they can get in and out very quickly, reducing surgery times.”

John says that the company rarely gets much advance notice of what parts will be required, or when. As a result, the flexibility of the Haas machines is another vital element in the day-to-day success of the business. PPM can offer up to 60 different sizes of conical stems, for example, at the touch of a start button, often in batches up to 1,200 or 1,500 a month. At the same time, the company will often produce custom runs of just five, 20, or 100.

PPM’s conical stems are complex titanium parts that utilize several Haas machines for operations, including close angular tapers, milling, drilling, tapping, turning, and broaching hexagons. It is all very different from the business that Fran Phillips started in his basement back in 1967. However, from modest beginnings, the business soon grew, and moved to a 40-man machine shop in the 70s before a strategic shift in the early 80s was to shape the future of PPM thereafter.

Top: The flexibility of the Haas machines is another vital element in the day-to-day success of the business. PPM can offer up to 60 different sizes of conical stems, for example, at the touch of a start button, often in batches up to 1,200 or 1,500 a month. Bottom: PPM is a recognized leader in the manufacture of advanced orthopedic implants, instrumentation, and sterilized delivery systems.

“Basically, we upgraded to the manufacture of medical devices and never looked back,” John states. “No one was in orthopedics back then, so it was a major opportunity for the business. Obviously, nowadays it is a completely different game. We made a concerted effort to invest a few million dollars to build our quality systems, procedures, and control plans to ISO 13485 standards, which is what we have done. After all, the key to our success – the most important thing we build – is not for sale: our reputation.”

Today, the pressures faced by PPM center largely on customers seeking offshore solutions, typically from China, Malaysia, and other low-cost areas of the world. As a result, the company has created a niche for machining high-end medical components that, “no one else wants to cut, because it is just not profitable for them,” John says.

He goes on and describes PPM’s manufacturing style as probably a little different, positively attacking CAD models in Pro-Engineer, and then generating our machine code in the same CAD package, returning seamlessly what the client ordered from solid geometry to the reality of actual products manufactured exactly to specification.

“Using Haas technology, we get greedy,” John notes. “We utilize a fourth-axis rotary head to machine four sides of the workpiece with one fixture, and then we flip it, and we are done in two operations, before it goes into our finishing department for deburring.”

Typical materials processed on the Haas machines include 17/4 stainless steel, 400- and 300-series stainless steel, titanium, cobalt chrome, and PEEK (polyether ether ketone). In terms of the latter, PPM has just secured its first order for PEEK, and production of these parts will be on Haas technology.

“We are a no-debt operation – we buy our equipment, pay it off, and move on,” John explains. “The Haas machines are particularly good for us, as is the price structure. The machines we acquired were not $500,000, as some makes; they were a lot less, so we had the means to bring them in as needed, and we could own them outright. In addition, for the size of product that we manufacture, the machining envelopes and tables are just the right size, and the machines have no problem holding the close tolerances our parts require.”

John and his family understand fully the importance of the parts they are making, the difference they can make to a recipient’s life, and the need to pay close attention to specifications and quality.

“My father has just turned 73,” John says. “But when he was 62, he had only recently begun to enjoy a reduced work schedule, and was spending more time playing his favorite game, golf. However, he fractured his L4 lumbar spine and could not walk. He was on pain pills and clutching chairs to move around; here was a guy coming into his golden years and wanting to enjoy himself, and suddenly, he is debilitated. Well, that same guy now has new PPM spine parts, and you would never know he had a problem. In fact, he just won his golf club championship!”
 

Haas Automation Inc.
Oxnard, Calif.
www.haascnc.com

Phillips Precision Medicraft (PPM)
Elmwood Park, N.J.
www.phillipsprecision.com
 

To see Haas machinery in action at PPM, watch the video at http://youtu.be/CPt6pyW0Pu4.