Capacity: Norman Noble Inc. has 2,740 sq. feet of combined manufacturing space dedicated to electropolishing, located throughout our three facilities, including:

• Electropolishing Systems in Mass Finishing Dept.
• 31 Automated Electropolishing Systems for Stent Manufacturing
• R&D Electropolishing Depts.
• Dedicated Electropolishing Rooms for Nitinol
• Dedicated Electropolishing Rooms for Cobalt Chrome
• Electropolishing Rooms located within Production Manufacturing Cells

Capabilities: Norman Noble has the ability to electropolish using both manual and automated systems. We are committed to continual investments in electropolish technologies and these activities are managed by our dedicated research and development engineering team. Our proprietary, automated electropolishing processes utilize various engineered blends of acids that are custom designed to remove metal and enhance the surface for each medical grade alloy, such as:

Stainless Steel Titanium Cobalt Chrome	Nitinol Molybdenum Platinum

This process enables the following: necessary metal removal, removal of stress risers, corner rounding, edge sharpening, deburring, provides high luster, removal of heat effected zones and micro-cracks, and often improves the products fatigue life. Our experienced engineering team works with the customer’s design requirements to allow for the proper material removal. All of our Electropolishing systems contain enhanced environmental controls critical to the development and manufacturing processes, including: humidity, temperature, and filtering parameters.

Product Applications: Customers use our contract manufacturing services to produce some of the smallest and most complex parts for the medical device industry. Some examples would include:

• Heart Valve Frames
• Vascular Stents
• Bone Screws
• Vessel Closure Implants
• Inferior Vena Cava Filters

 

Prototype Department: Our advanced metal finishing services are located in independent prototype departments with dedicated equipment for each finishing process. This enables our R&D electropolishing equipment to be isolated from the production finishing areas and allows for our engineering team to conduct process development activities required for electropolishing prior to production.

Process: The NNI electropolishing process utilizes various engineered blends of acids that are designed to dissolve the components of the part’s material, when the part is connected to a positive electrical charge, placed in a bath of engineered acids, and in the presence of a negatively charged counterpart.  The part then becomes the anode, the counterpart becomes the cathode. Ions flow from the part to the cathode, in a somewhat disproportionate manner.

During polishing, the acids become saturated with the dissolved metals and metal salts from the parts that have been polished. During repeated use, the solution approaches its equilibrium point and then begins precipitating out additional metals and salts to the bottom of the electropolishing system as sludge. The majority of the metal in the solution plates to the cathode.