The centralized procurement of spine has just been implemented, with an average price reduction of 84%. Under the national centralized procurement environment, cost reduction and efficiency improvement have become the current topics of concern for all orthopedic companies. How to quickly reduce production costs while ensuring quality.

PEEK Cage is a typical product of high-value spinal consumables. Currently, the materials are mainly imported, and most of the production is still based on CNC processing. The process is mature, but there is a lot of material waste and high processing costs. Simple commercial procurement negotiations and processing technology optimization are difficult to achieve significant cost reduction needs.

How can PEEK Cage quickly achieve more than 90% effective cost reduction

On the one hand, domestic substitution is achieved in terms of materials. Changzhou Junhua Medical Technology has currently carried out third-party inspections in accordance with the national requirements for implantable PEEK materials, YY/T0660-2008, and obtained a complete third-party test report on implantable PEEK materials. This ensures that the materials can be effectively substituted in terms of physical and chemical properties and biology. This can significantly shorten delivery time and costs.

Reducing costs simply from the material aspect is a quick and direct way, but it is not a cost-optimized option. In order to further cooperate with customers to effectively reduce costs, we simultaneously optimized the molding process of PEEKcage. By changing from CNC processing to injection molding, using hot runner molds, and replacing raw materials and processes simultaneously, more than 90% of effective cost reduction can be achieved.

To further ensure that the injection molded PEEK Cage can meet clinical use, we tested the injection molded and CNC processed PEEK Cages according to the YY/T 0959 (ASTM F2077) test standard. No fatigue failure occurred under a load of 4000N, a frequency of 5Hz, and a test number of 5 million times. In order to verify whether there is a difference between injection molded products and machined products, a static destructive compression test was performed, and it was found that the injection molded product yielded at 10000N, while the machined product yielded at 12000N. The performance of the injection molded PEEK Cage is slightly lower.

In order to further reduce the risk of substitution, we hope that there will be no significant difference in performance after the process is replaced. In this regard, we analyzed that the difference between injection molding and CNC processing may mainly come from the difference in raw material molding. Extruded rods may have better crystallinity because the slow extrusion process can ensure sufficient crystallization. Relatively speaking, the injection molding process is relatively short, and insufficient product crystallization may lead to differences in mechanical properties.

We further improved the crystallinity of the material by heat treating the injection molded PEEKCage to verify our hypothesis of this process. We conducted static destructive compression tests on the heat treated injection molded PEEKCage and found that the yield strength was basically the same as that of the CNC machined PEEKCage.

Based on the above experimental demonstration, we can meet the clinical biomechanical requirements and achieve more than 90% cost reduction by switching processes and raw materials.

Changzhou Junhua Medical Technology is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Junhua PEEK. It has established a special team to cooperate with customers in the medical industry to be responsible for the research and development, production and sales of medical polymer materials and products such as medical PEEK, PPSU, LCF/PEEK thermoplastic composites. In 2021, in order to meet the development needs of domestic sports medicine, Changzhou Junhua Medical actively cooperated with major domestic medical institutions to develop sports medicine molds. It has the following advantages: (1) many years of experience in PEEK injection molding; (2) a complete sports medicine development process; (3) the same brand and model of micro injection molding machines to complete seamless switching with friendly companies; (4) a complete after-sales service system, etc., which are recognized by major domestic medical institutions.

Based on the present and looking to the future. In 2018, Changzhou Junhua Medical officially launched the implantable PEEK project. At present, it has obtained complete third-party reports on biology, physicochemistry, aging, etc. In order to better standardize implantable PEEK, it has added implantable AKSOPEEK series grades.

1) AKSOPEEK Natural: Implant-grade PEEK pure material;

2) AKSOPEEK HA: Hydroxyapatite improves the biocompatibility of implantable PEEK materials;

3) AKSOPEEK CF: Chopped carbon fiber implant grade PEEK material;

4) AKSOPEEK LCF: continuous carbon fiber implant grade PEEK material;