Chester Medical Solutions offers a unique service to the UK’s Pharmaceutical and Healthcare industries. With a 50 year history of providing flexible, innovative and cost-effective solutions to challenging briefs, they have established themselves as a valuable partner to ethical, generic and medical device brand owners.
Their GMP Contract Packing division is fitted out to the highest standards and provides a comprehensive range of services. Dedicated suites contain processes such as Blister Packing, Peel Pouch packing, Pot, Bottle and Sachet filling as well as Medical Device packing and assembly.
With this particular company offering cartons and leaflets from their own facility, the limiting factor to more bespoke solutions for their growing list of customers is often the available sizes of format parts for their machines.
To unlock significantly more value for their customers, the company needed to source a packing throat with greater flexibility and were hopeful that 3D printing may offer a solution.
Result
AddParts redesign, allowing for production of a wider range of packing sizes, means a greater value of product, and improved profit
Why choose AddParts?
Having previously used AddParts by Addition to supply better value components as an alternative to costly and time-consuming OEM change parts, Chester Medical Solutions (CMS) were keen to see what could be done to improve the range of packing sizes they offer. Our design capabilities in 3D printing and experience in 3D print manufacturing technology mean we were able to produce a bespoke solution to fit their specific requirements.
What did we do?
AddParts suggested redesigning the throat to allow for an adjustable width, which would mean an increase in the range of pack sizes which could be produced, and a reduction in the number of change parts needing to be held in stock. It would also vastly reduce the changeover time to create different packing sizes.
Using the machine itself and the original part as a basis for the design, the component was optimised for production using SLS 3D printing at minimum production cost and turnaround.
Strong and wear resistant features were designed into the part which is 3D printed in an industrial nylon.
The design takes advantage of the accuracy of industrial 3D print with very fine tolerances between modular components ensuring reliable operation.
Components were installed on the machine just 7 days.
Testimonial
The OEM change parts are fine for standard-sized cartons but it’s rare to have such sizes these days. After using AddParts as a cost-effective alternative to OEM change parts and being impressed with the quality of the parts, we were delighted with their adaptive throat solution to reduce the stock of change part sizes and changeover time.
Simon Preston
Operations Manager
Chester Medical Solutions