Catheter Development & Manufacturing

Design, development, and production of minimally invasive devices.

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Across cardiology, electrophysiology, neurology, structural heart, peripheral vascular, and robotic-assisted procedures, physicians continue to seek less invasive treatment options that reduce patient trauma and shorten recovery times. At the same time, technologies such as advanced imaging, sensors, ablation, mapping, navigation, and robotics are being incorporated into catheter platforms to improve procedural precision.

As device functionality increases, so does design complexity. Manufacturers are looking for ways to accelerate development cycles while maintaining performance, reliability, and manufacturability. To meet the growing needs of our medical device customers, Jabil is uniquely positioned to combine catheter expertise, materials knowledge, miniaturization capabilities, electronics integration, and scalable manufacturing under one roof for catheters and their associated capital equipment.

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Jabil's Advanced Catheter Development Lab

Built for invention, the lab is located in the Jabil Innovation Center at our headquarters in St. Petersburg, Florida. It is a dedicated center for the design refinement and prototyping of minimally invasive devices (MID) and catheters including building, testing, and manufacturing development.

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Catheters and minimally invasive devices require highly specialized, intricate manufacturing processes. At the lab, Jabil customers and collaborators bring their ideas while we provide advanced skills, equipment and processes for the design, development, and manufacturing of catheters and MID.

We offer proven capabilities and specialized equipment for materials, miniaturization, component integration, micro-assembly, skills training, and rapid prototyping with failure analysis to accelerate commercial manufacturing at scale.

Equipment and Capabilities Available for:

  • Braiding
  • Hole punching and skiving
  • Tip forming
  • Coiling
  • Laser cutting and welding
  • Nitinol shape setting
  • Balloon forming and bonding
  • Catheter shape setting
  • Electrode swaging
  • Parison stretching
  • Liner stretching

Specialized Equipment Under One Roof

The lab provides advantages in product development with critical equipment in a single location including high magnification optical inspection, SEM, EDX, FTIR, X-ray imaging and other failure analysis instruments. The following processes are supported at the lab and do not require multiple transfers of IP or supplies among several sites.

Automated PTFE Liner Stretcher

Stretcher allows the liner to sit tight against the mandrel with minimal relaxation. Fine machine control increases throughput, decreases scrapped units, reduces etching issues, and eliminates carpal tunnel injury concerns.

Balloon Bonding

Balloon thermal split die bonder for adhering balloons to sheaths and catheters as well as tip bonding and lap-joint bonding of various polymer durometers.

Balloon Forming

Full servo control on proximal and distal axes, enabling precise, fast stretching of the parisons during balloon-blowing process. Allows for quick exchange of the heat/cool block for different balloon sizes and shapes.

Braiding

The 32-carrier horizontal braider is able to braid a variety of materials including:

  • Round and flat wire: stainless steel, copper, nitinol, titanium, gold, platinum, and cobalt-chromium
  • Fiber and other non-metallic strands: nylon, polyester, Dyneema®, Kevlar®, Vectran™, Spectra®, PET, PEN, PP, PEEK, and liquid crystal polymers (LCP)

Braided Tube Cutting

The automated braided tubing cutter cuts difficult materials, including braid-reinforced tubing, stainless steel, polycarbonate, and nylon 12.

Coil Winding

Winds coils using filaments as small as .001-inch diameter on a .004-inch mandrel using innovative closed-loop filar tension control system. Machine flexibility enables the filar tension to be recipe-controlled from 5 to 600 grams during entire wind.

Femto and Fiber Laser Cutter

Laser cutting of hypo tubes, and flat sheets. The equipment can accommodate ferrous and non-ferrous metals as well as exotic materials.

Hole Punching/Skiving

Automated catheter hole punching/skiving with four axes to allow for repeatable patterns of round, oval, and other shaped holes. Automated hole punching and tube drilling employ quick-change tooling to manage a broad range of material types and sizes.

Nitinol Shape Setting

Nitinol shape-setting ovens provide the accuracy and precision required for nitinol. Shape setting entails process development to determine the exact temperatures needed to transition temperatures and holding time. It offers a highly controllable fluidized salt bath (aluminum oxide or equivalent) to hold the part and control the temperature and time.

Parison Stretcher

Stretch or neck-down tube parisons for preparation for balloon-forming with precision.

Precision Laser Welding

Laser welding of anchor rings, pull wires, braid, and fine wire. The equipment can accommodate a wide range of materials.

Shape Setting

Shape setting for complex curves of various materials and durometers.

Swaging

Rotary swaging of electrodes on catheter outer diameter or marker-band swaging to lock down lower profile radiopaque marker.

Thermal Bonding

Thermal bonding for lap joints, butt welding, and PE-shrinking.

Tipping

Achieve flash-less tips, smooth bonds, and exacting geometry with virtually all thermoplastic materials. Produce a range of applications including flares, flanges, angular welds, bonds, multi-lumen shape transitions, butt welds, balloon-to-catheter welds, neck downs, soft-tip fusion, metal-to-tube adhering, sheaths, dilators, radio-opaque, strain relief bonds, swaged metal needle guides, and tube-in-tube bonds.

Vertical Reflow Tower

A precision catheter laminating machine designed for consistent results using a tightly controlled heated chamber that moves along the tubing at a regulated speed to produce uniform laminations across medium to long length shafts.

Get in Touch

Please contact us to learn more or request a visit to the Advanced Catheter Development Lab.