When medical device OEM design and product engineers encounter a need for an elastomer to solve a unique design or functional requirement, they almost always turn to silicone as the elastomer of choice. To provide the custom designed silicone molded part, they turn to Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics, an experienced custom silicone fabricator capable of a variety of molding processes to provide the best part for them.

Our Application Development Engineers partner with our customers to understand all aspects of the component's function within the final application. This in turn ultimately influences the molding process that we will employ.

Specialty Molding Capabilities include:
• Insert Molding
• Vacuum Molding
• Overmolding
• Automated LIM Molding
• Calendered Sheets
• Mold Tooling Design & Build
• Two-Shot Medical Molding

The type of molding process selected to produce a particular part is influenced by many things: the complexity and specifications for the part, material requirements, allowable part tolerances, the number of parts to be molded and the economic restrictions of the project.

Liquid Injection Molding

This popular process utilizes Liquid Silicone Rubber (LSR), a two-part platinum catalyzed product to mold the desired components. A pumping systems mixes the 2 components, typically an "A" and a "B" component with the consistency of toothpaste, in a precision meter-mix process to a given ratio and delivers the mix to the tool in the injection machine to be vulcanized or cured into its final state.

Saint-Gobain's Application Development Engineering Group stand ready at all of our locations to assist you in design, prototyping and production of your medical components utilizing the LIM process. With over 20 years of LIM experience and an arsenal of different types of LIM machines, both vertical and horizontal; we can solve your supply issues.

Compression, Transfer and Injection Molding

All of the above traditional high-pressure methods of molding utilize silicone "Gum-Rubber" stocks sometimes referred to high viscosity silicone heat cured rubber. Because the silicone is of a higher viscosity, more like modeling clay, and are not precatalyzed from vendors, mixing and milling procedures are required to prepare the silicone for molding.

Higher cavitation molds can be used with any of these methods; however, since cycle times are higher than the LIM process and more labor is involved, parts are not necessarily less expensive.

The primary advantage of using any of the "Gum Rubber" molding processes for silicone is that raw material choices are more varied and properties profiles are more easily customized or modified to provide a specific unique specification requirement.

Depending on your specific project needs, the volume of parts per year, the life of the application and the specific design, our engineers will present the right option for you. We can even offer a comparison of 2 of the different types of molding processes described above so you have a better understanding of the how the variables affect the price and quality of your part.

Many parts that we custom fabricate present design challenges which are critical to the functionality of the parts performance and can only be met by utilizing specific specialty processes like insert or vacuum molding. For example: a unique multi-port connector with a complex sealing surface may only be achieved with insert molding and a very thin-walled sharp cornered seal may need to be vacuumed molded to get the desired profile.

The recent addition of two-shot molding technology to our portfolio further expands our abiliity to meet the complex requirements of today's sophisticated medical device designs.

We have the ability to utilize any of these processes to help you solve your complex design issues. Because we are back integrated with our own tool making capability, our response with this type of specialty molding requiring delicately machined inserts, is typically much more competitive. The full breadth of our tool making capability is described in detail in Capabilities - Tooling section. Please visit there to learn how we can reduce your project cost.