CEO Update

“How has the financial crisis affected you?” I would not be the only one who has been asked this recently, and of course I often ask the question of others. There are lots of different ways to look at the im:pact of the current financial turmoil, and for companies like MiniFAB who are constantly working at the front edge of innovation, such times create great opportunities. We have noticed many of our clients emerging from their first response (that of stabilizing the balance sheets) and moving to the next response stage. At the heart of this next stage is a recognition that the world has changed, markets have changed, the competitive landscape has changed, and that no¨ matter what happens they cannot afford to come out of the financial crisis in the same shape that they went into it.

While it was easy to talk about product innovation and implementation of new technologies before the crisis, it now becomes imperative to act on such thoughts. Now is exactly the right time to develop the new lab-on-a-chip platforms that will form the basis of a whole new product family, or port your lab assays onto new biosensor platforms. Of course not every venture has survived this crisis and those that have not survived create opportunities for acquisition of IP and skills and their application into completely new areas.

So MiniFAB is as busy as ever bringing together people, ideas and markets and working with our clients to create new products, test manufacturing concepts, or simply make one-off demonstrators for custom applications. Call any of our team and we would love to talk with you about how your products could look after the crisis.

Erol Harvey
CEO

---

One Stop Job Shop

With over $5m worth of state of the art equipment located in our ISO 6 and ISO 7 clean room facility, it shouldn’t surprise anybody that we are so keen to promote our services as widely as possible. What usually raises an eyebrow, however, is just how broad our client base really is. MiniFAB’s Job Shop has spent the last 7 years making available a unique collection of equipment, processes and capabilities that are operated by a team of experienced engineers and lab technicians to a diverse clientele. Job Shop has successfully delivered hundreds of projects (resulting in thousands of parts) ranging from tiny holes in plastic, microfluidic devices, microtextured surfaces, micro-optics, electroformed tools (up to 1m x 1m), fluidic manifolds, packaged micro-electronics… The list goes on!

What has become apparent during our interaction with so many groups is that MiniFAB can play a vital role in extending the capabilities of our clients by providing them access to ours. For those challenging problems where individual features are too small, material choice is too limited or costs are too high for fabrication using a conventional engineering approach, MiniFAB may well be able to provide a solution. In fact, in some cases there may not be any other way to realize the design.Some of our clients already have a good understanding of what is needed and make their approach requesting specific instruments or processes, whereas others can be far more flexible with regards to all aspects of the work. In either case, an open mind as to how a challenge is best solved can generate rewarding outcomes with respect to the cost, delivery time and specifications.

Many jobs start as a quick feasibility investigations and grow in stages: first providing small numbers of parts for further testing, then hundreds or thousands of parts for ongoing, small volume manufacturing. Work often begins only requiring access to 1 or 2 pieces of equipment, but this can extend to include many process steps and many different pieces of equipment (e.g., laser, milling, sputter deposition, electroforming, hot embossing, parylene coating, assembly, wire bonding, packaging, etc). The big advantage of bringing this work to MiniFAB is that all of these processes, and many more, are available at a single site, within a single, clean room environment. This means that at MiniFAB, we can greatly reduce turn-around times, increase yield, and therefore reduce your cost.

Jason Hayes
Operations Manager

---

Parylene Coating

One of MiniFAB’s most unsung capabilities is our parylene coating capability. This service provides a simple and cost effective way to protect a product or component from outside environments.Parylene is applied at room temperature using customized vacuum deposition equipment that allows control of coating thickness and coating rate. The coating process allows for uniform, pinhole free coverage of a product, and therefore provides maximum barrier protection. The design of this process ensures a truly conformal coating, preserving the true angles and geometrics of any object. The optically clear parylene coating can be applied to a wide range of materials including polymers, silicon, metals, elastomers, paper and glass. Typical coating thicknesses are in the order of 1 to several micrometers.

Adding a parylene coat to a component or product will provide many advantages over the otherwise exposed part. In general the coating is applied to protect a part such as a circuit board from harsh environments. However, the coating also offers other benefits such as surface friction reduction, increasing scratch resistivity and providing a strong dielectric layer. Additionally, the inert nature of parylene makes it biocompatible, meeting USP Class VI requirements. This allows it to be used to protect medical components such as disposable diagnostics. It can also act as a lock down, decreasing the risk of particulate contamination.

At MiniFAB, a parylene coat is generally applied to improve surface characteristics of polymer substrates in the production of disposable diagnostic devices. However, in recent times MiniFAB has also offered the coating services to third parties. One of our success stories that highlights the value of parylene, involved the coating of rubber membranes in large industrial fuel pumps. The thin layer of parylene on the membrane provides an excellent barrier to the volatile fuel and helps to eliminate the need for frequent and expensive services, and extends the life of the pump.Of course, there are many more potential applications where a thin conformal coating may add significant value. The easy adaptability of the parylene coating process means that it can be used to help protect almost any object in a cost and time efficient way.

Bas Garst
Production Manager

---

Cleanroom Injection Moulding

Cleanroom injection moulding is an integral part of MiniFAB’s unique combination of capabilities. Volume manufacturing of plastic parts is an area traditionally dominated by injection moulding because of its cost effectiveness. This is a factor particularly relevant to the manufacture of disposable medical diagnostic devices that are often targeted for low cost, single use applications. Further to cost restraints, environmental conditions during manufacturing are generally just as important, and in some cases even more so. Injection moulding inside a cleanroom environment is a logical response to meet the stringent GMP guidelines that govern the manufacture of products for medical and pharmaceutical purposes.

MiniFAB’s injection moulding capability is located in an ISO 7 (Class 10000) cleanroom. Their all-electric, 60-ton machine ensures outstanding process control and high levels of precision for the production of over a million components annually.

One of the key competitive strengths of MiniFAB’s moulding service is their in-house tool-making facility. In a dedicated workshop parts for the injection moulding tooling are created using nickel forming techniques. The use of high precision nickel forming allows MiniFAB to prepare tooling with micro-sized features that cannot be created using conventional techniques. These tools, in conjunction with their cleanroom-based precision moulding press, and ISO 13485 accreditation, provides customers with a rather unique capability that is particularly suited for high precision medical products.

The broad range of additional capabilities available as post-processes amplifies the value of MiniFAB’s cleanroom injection moulding service. These services vary from metallization, surface coatings, to assembly and packaging and much more. A recent example of a medical product that profits from such a combination of processes is the TearLABTM Osmolarity Test Card that contains three separate components, all made and assembled by MiniFAB. Steve Zmina, VP of Manufacturing at TearLABTM explains; “there is a clear advantage to work with MiniFAB because all of the key processes required for the fabrication of the TearLABTM cartridge are located in the same building and even in the same cleanroom area. For TearLABTM this means lower production costs and a much better control over quality which is critical for our product”.

Bas Garst
Production Manager