Isometric Presents at SLAS2023

Isometric Micro Molding CEO, Donna Bibber, recently presented at the Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening Conference (SLAS) that took place in San Diego, CA. 

With the miniaturization of medical devices and laboratory processes, the need for small and highly precise components and parts has continued to increase rapidly. The presentation “Challenges in Precision Molding and Emerging Micro Advancements” reviewed challenges and offered insight to the solutions for micro molding thinner walled vessels, micron-sized microfluidic channels, and tighter tolerances all while overcoming scalability issues for high volume applications. 

One of the challenges Ms. Bibber discussed was molding thin-wall arrays on PCR array plates. It requires molding wall thicknesses that are thinner than recommended by resin companies or thought possible, forming strong knit lines in wall thicknesses of 0.002” (50 microns) or larger, and maintaining tolerances and flatness across larger molded parts, less than 10- micron flatness over an array plate. 

The solutions include:

• Mold design and fabrication techniques for high precision of cavity to core alignment
• Expertise in mold design and fabrication that enables extreme thin walls on large arrays which includes: Micron- size mold vents, Precision gate sizes, and Cavity and core height

• Extreme mold design attention to heating and cooling and injection compression processing provides flatness control to < 10 microns across a full array.