Unicut wins needleless technology contract

Unicut has been awarded a contract from a Dutch company to produce an initial 10,000 sets of a needleless drug administration technology that enables insulin to pass through the pores of the skin.

The contract for the production of the 12-part assembly is worth more than GBP230,000, according to the company.

The components range from the smallest that is 1.5mm diameter by 15mm long up to 24mm diameter by 110mm long and have certain tolerances that have to be within + 0.005mm.

The parts are made from a variety of materials, including stainless and S1 tool steels, titanium, aluminium and plastics.

Certain parts have to be heat treated, bead blasted and hard anodised while others require silk screen printing as part of the contract.

Also, as part of the process development ready for final machining, Unicut had to account for different thickness of coating layer on features such as grooves, recesses and bores as well as diameters to ensure the hard anodised finish met the final tolerances demanded for the exacting and precise operation of the device.

Within the machining cycle on one complex component, Unicut has to ensure the positioning of thread pitch line starts is relative to slots at the other end of the component within 0.5 degrees in order to enable the user to precisely set the dosage of insulin.

There is also a highly accurate milled cam profile that has to be precisely machined within the single cycle operation in order to 'fire' the drug through pores of the skin.

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