17 April 2008
Bespak manufactures medical devices for inhaled drug delivery and anaesthesia. Many devices are inhalers, used to administer precisely metered doses of dry powder or aerosolised medicine to sufferers of illnesses such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.The tensile and compressive helical springs form a key element of the operating mechanism of these devices, and must be checked for conformance to strict tolerances on arrival at manufacturing facilities.Bespak previously used a manually driven test system to perform tensile and comprehensive force tests on the springs.Mecmesin supplied the company with a Multi-Test 1-i computer-controlled force testing system, fitted with a 50N loadcell. This system, coupled with Mecmesin’s Emperor software, provides automated control of all test parameters, a moved claimed to cut inaccuracies.To perform a compression test, the spring is loaded onto custom-made alignment pins. The loadcell then descends at a constant rate, stopping first to record the spring’s free height, then continuing to the specified test height, taking more than 2000 readings per second to accurately map the spring’s compression profile.‘We have used Mecmesin equipment for some years,’ said Peter Haken, quality control engineer at Bespak.‘We now estimate that every second, more than a thousand people rely on a Bespak device to help them breathe and as our testing requirements have grown, so too has our relationship with the company. Today we rely upon their advanced test systems to guarantee the quality of our supplied materials,’ added Haken.
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