Creating clean, accurate holes in multilumen catheter tubing is difficult, especially when the tube contains braid reinforcement, multiple lumens and tight positional requirements.
The Axiom platform provides femtosecond laser processing for precision hole drilling in medical polymer tubing. It is designed for applications where hole quality, lumen protection and process repeatability are critical.
Hole edge quality is critical. Loose debris, fibres, flash, melt or thermally affected material can create downstream quality risks, especially in medical devices where particulate contamination must be tightly controlled.
Multilumen tubing contains separate channels within the same tube. The hole must open the target lumen without breaking into neighbouring lumens or damaging internal structures.
Many catheter shafts contain a PTFE liner, braid reinforcement and an outer polymer tube. The hole may need to pass through polymer, braid or a combination of both. Mechanical drilling can struggle to process this type of composite wall cleanly and consistently.
Femtosecond laser drilling is suited to high-precision medical tubing because it can remove material with reduced heat input compared with longer-pulse or conventional thermal processes. For medical tube drilling, this helps support:
Cleaner hole geometry
Reduced thermal distortion
Lower melt and flash
Better control through polymer and braid
Improved protection of adjacent lumens
Repeatable processing for production
Axiom is Laser Wire Solutions’ femtosecond laser platform for ultra-precision material processing. It is designed for applications where material integrity, feature quality and process control are critical.