Processing of plastic parts
The hearing aid industry strongly demands that its products be customized. Because successful hearing aid products rely heavily on its adaptation to the anatomical properties of the ear canal, the industry cannot provide any large-scale manufactured product.
The process of using laser sintering to produce hearing aids is as follows:
1. Make a copy of the ear canal anatomy with wax castings.
2. Scan the wax casting with a scanner to get 3D data.
3. Add an identification code to the 3D data that can be used to help identify the hearing aid housing after the laser sintering process.
4. Laser sintered housing.
5. Combine the laser-sintered casing and electronic components.
In the hearing aid industry, laser sintering has become the choice of the manufacturing process. The manufacturing process works with the same efficiency, whether it is a batch of the same product or a different (write-once) product. Hundreds of hearing aid housings can be placed in the styling envelope of the laser sintering system, allowing hundreds of products to be produced in one night. Electronic manufacturing fully embodies its potential: in the absence of two identical parts, the ability to directly use 3D CAD data for the manufacturing process is a critical function. Later in the production, the data can be reused to make spare parts of the original geometry, each part having a serial number within the housing as the identification code used by the patient.
At the current level of laser sintering technology, each plastic laser sintering machine produces 100,000 hearing aid casings per year.
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