The rapidly growing field of dental and medical components is driven by enterprising orthopaedic surgeons, dental professionals and medical screw and implant companies, who work in close co-operation with computer-aided design and manufacturing (CAD/CAM) software developers and dedicated machine and tool manufacturers to transform their inventions into parts that are revolutionising medical and dental procedures. Each new component demands correspondingly advanced tools and geometries to create new and complex shapes, and to ensure extreme precision and consistently excellent surfaces.
The materials used for producing medical screws and implants include titanium superalloys, although stainless steel materials are used when a special ratio of depth of cut to chip thickness is required. These materials are gummy and cause built-up edge (BUE), which tends to wear down edge sharpness, while the high temperatures generated during chip-breaking shorten tool life and damage surface quality.
Dental screws
Iscar provides dedicated cutting tools for each of the main operations involved in machining dental screws. The company has developed two options for rough OD (outer dimension) turning. The Swisscut compact tool is designed for Swiss-type automatics and CNC lathes; it reduces set-up time and enables easy indexing without having to remove the toolholder from the machine, while the inserts are equipped with chip deflectors designed specifically for machining small parts. The second option features Swissturn toolholders and offers a unique clamping mechanism to improve insert clamping and replacement on Swiss-type machines and Jetcut high-pressure coolant tools.
Read more: Not a small challenge: Cutting tools for miniature dental and medical parts
