Seaway Plastics brings precision, quality and innovation to every customer relationship. Examples of the types of specialized diagnostic products that are used to inform and support healthcare diagnosis and treatment decision making include (but are not limited to):

Seaway Plastics has been a trusted manufacturer of high-quality components, products and assemblies for a variety of Class 1, 2 and 3 medical devices for more than four decades. To ensure a sterile manufacturing environment, its facilities have ISO 13485 Class 7 and 8 certified cleanrooms that prevent airborne contaminants as small as 0.3 and 0.5 microns, respectively, during molding and assembly operations. This ensures that finished products that are intended for use in medical, healthcare and life sciences applications meet all industry standards and regulatory requirements.

Most injection molding facilities already have all the equipment they need to run efficient, repeatable Scientific Molding processes. What’s really needed is a Structured Training Plan. Ongoing employee training is essential for instilling a company-wide commitment to quality and creating a culture of excellence. A strong in-house training program equips your technicians and engineers with the advanced processing skills they need to establish, maintain, and document Scientific Molding processes.

Seaway Plastics has four decades of experience and a proven track record engineering, manufacturing and assembling high-purity medical devices that are designed for disposable, single-use applications.

A scientific process is a more profitable process. By allowing technicians to quickly identify, isolate, and correct molded part problems, a properly maintained Scientific Molding process reduces scrap and eliminates unnecessary downtime. This results in an increase of efficiently-produced, defect-free molded parts — and happier customers.

Properly documenting an injection molding processes is much more involved than simply jotting down machine settings. A “scientific” approach to process documentation primarily focuses on machine-independent process outputs — allowing you to quickly establish a given process on virtually any molding machine. Scientific process documentation also makes it easy for technicians to compensate for material variations and changes in processing conditions.

Within the realm of medical products that are used to support the health journey of patients managing respiratory conditions, examples include:

Scientific Molding is a data-driven approach to developing, documenting, maintaining, and troubleshooting an injection molding process. Unlike traditional injection molding, Scientific Molding separates — or “decouples” molding processes into First Stage Filling, Second Stage Packing/Holding, and Cooling/Recovery. By identifying and isolating separate molding phases, a Scientific Injection Molding process minimizes shot-to-shot variation, improves molded part consistency, reduces scrap, and improves energy efficiency.

To enable end-to-end project management for complex manufacturing projects, Seaway Plastics is able to manage each of these critical steps:

Across numerous medical, life sciences and healthcare applications, Seaway Plastics works closely with OEMs to produce high-quality products that are used in the following applications:

Seaway Plastics brings precision, quality and innovation to every customer relationship. Recent examples of the types of specialized products produced for OEMs in this sector include (but are not limited to):

This exclusive training approach allows companies to perform the same type of classroom learning found in popular seminars in the comfort of their own production environment.

With five manufacturing locations across the U.S. and the ability to work in close partnership with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), Seaway Plastics creates end-to end solutions for the safe and cost-effective manufacturing of a broad range of precision medical components, devices and assemblies that are used throughout the medical, healthcare and life sciences sectors. Such products are used every day in clinical settings to support life-saving and life-improving medical procedures and other healthcare interventions that ensure optimal patient health outcomes.

It’s simple: Routsis’s extensive experience in Scientific Molding consulting and training uniquely positions us to help your company decrease scrap and downtime while improving molded part quality. For over 30 years, we’ve been helping injection molders develop robust and reliable processes — improving their parts and maximizing their profits.

Medical injection molding using highly engineered materials is a proven option for creating precise industrial parts and complicated assemblies while keeping costs and risks low and quality and reliability high. Seaway Plastics has four decades of experience providing custom, end-to-end solutions to enable the manufacture of specialized products that are used during numerous diagnostic and life sciences applications.

The Routsis SmartTech™ program is the most effective hands-on training program for plastic processors and technicians. This unique combination of face-to-face instruction, online training, and hands-on skill development focuses on the science of injection molding — not just on the workings of a particular injection molding machine. Two-thirds of the time is spent at the machine, making it a better way to help your company improve its efficiency, profitability and competitive position.

Collectively, these benefits enhance reliability and reputational value — and can provide competitive advantage — for the OEM. For the healthcare professionals and patients who rely on such state-of-the-art products, the benefit of solid teamwork that consistently delivers high quality and reliability during manufacturing brings peace of mind.

Turning technicians into good scientific molders only requires a few basic steps. First, provide them with a strong foundation of scientific processing concepts. Next, help them develop accurate and repeatable documentation skills. Finally, they’ll need strong scientific troubleshooting skills to identify the problem, interpret the process documentation, isolate what’s changed, and ultimately return the process to the approved standard.

Routsis has the largest library of online Scientific Molding training courses in the world. With courses that include material drying, material purging, process parameters, troubleshooting, and robotics, our extensive catalog of Scientific Molding training programs will help your employees successfully establish, document, and maintain a robust Scientific Injection Molding process.

We also offer exclusive, modular training packages that group our most popular Scientific Molding training courses — at significant savings when compared to purchasing the courses individually.

Seaway Plastics offers a deep bench of DFM, tooling and injection molding expertise, and experience working with the broadest array of highly engineered materials. This supports the cost-effective, reliable precision manufacturing of many specialized parts, components and final products that are used to support medical, healthcare and life sciences applications.

Providing a full range of services that enable the manufacturing of complex products for these high-stakes applications, Seaway Plastics works closely with OEMs and CDMOs to select the most appropriate material from a broad array of medical-grade plastics and silicone and provides a complete range of engineering and medical injection molding services. Each of Seaway Plastics’ facilities is ISO-13485 certified and offers comprehensive process-validation services to ensure that all operations meet the prevailing quality and regulatory requirements.

The concept of Scientific Troubleshooting is quite straightforward: Determine what has changed in the process and then return the process back to the documented standard. If the process cannot return to the documented standard, the technician determines the specific condition that’s preventing this and corrects it. This returns the process back to the standard — and allows the machine to resume making good parts for the customer.

Once a scientific molding process is established, the process outputs are meticulously documented and optimized, which greatly simplifies troubleshooting and allows injection molding processes to be easily transferred to different molding machines.

The ability to produce precise surgical robotic tools and assemblies that meet all of the rigorous engineering and regulatory specifications is another way in which both Seaway Plastics and its OEM customers are supporting surgeons and other medical practitioners in their quest to guarantee accuracy and repeatability during surgical procedures — thereby enhancing patient safety and overall health outcomes.

Implant-delivery systems play a critical role in modern healthcare interventions, as they are used to support the accurate placement of therapeutic medical devices during surgical operations. OEMs that supply such specialty products to the surgical community must choose their manufacturing partners carefully to safeguard the integrity of the final products and enable optimal, consistent healthcare outcomes.

Routsis’s Scientific SkillSet™ Series is a unique learning experience that combines detailed, step-by-step online instruction with practical hands-on labs and worksheets. Each of the twenty-six course/worksheet combinations focuses on developing important processing skills related to troubleshooting, optimizing, and documenting an injection molding process.

By partnering with Seaway Plastics to streamline all steps in the complex manufacturing process, OEMs are able to be more competitive, safeguard their own brand reputation and focus on meeting the needs of their end customers — healthcare professionals treating patients in hospitals, physician practices and other clinical settings. Ultimately, this team effort is critical to support the shared end objective — which is to support and enable optimal health outcomes for patients.

Patients benefit from the precision, quality and innovation Seaway Plastics brings to the table when meeting the unique specifications of every OEM engagement. To date, the company is helping OEMs to improve patient outcomes in the following areas:

The development and use of surgical robotic devices and platforms continue to revolutionize how lifesaving and life-enhancing surgeries are performed. Such devices are complex mechanical assemblies with many parts, all of which have extremely exacting engineering requirements and zero tolerance for deviation.

With access to the most appropriate, state-of-the-art thermoplastic and thermoset options, Seaway Plastics helps OEMs to select the right materials — those that will deliver the specific suite of performance characteristics that are required by the finished parts, products or assemblies. Our customers have the opportunity to choose from a wide range of highly engineered materials, including but not limited to:

There are many important advantages to selecting a manufacturing partner that is able to take ownership of every step in the process in-house — from engineering services to prototyping to fully validated production — without the need to involve additional partners or create multiple outsourcing arrangements. Specifically, for OEMs, the demonstrable advantages such a tightly integrated approach include:

OEMs that partner with Seaway Plastics to produce single-use disposable medical devices for use throughout the medical, healthcare and life sciences sectors gain peace of mind and reliability, knowing their manufacturing partner can handle the project from start to finish, from DFM all the way through final product manufacturing, assembly and validation.