What the Medical Industry Can Learn from the Aerospace Industry

Heat treatment standards are stricter in the aerospace industry than in the medical industry where lives are on the line. This doesn’t make sense and something is being done about it.  Recently, I was asked to give a vacuum heat treating presentation to a group of design engineers at a large medical device company. The lead engineer asked if I would help educate his team on this subject primarily because they had just experienced a major failure caused by improper heat treatment. After learning more about the failure, it became evident that the medical device engineers in that room could learn a great deal from the aerospace industry, especially regarding knowledge of aerospace materials and secondary aerospace processes. It also became apparent that an industry-managed oversight program addressing the technical competency required in special processing was necessary in order for medical device companies to improve design and manufacturer of future medical devices.


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