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The Octex Group: Delivering Quality Products at a Faster Rate

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Before launching a new medical device on the market, manufacturers need to ensure a high degree of certainty surrounding their quality. The manufacturing processes surrounding the device’s production must have the proper controls in place to ensure safety and adherence to the specified user, technical, and regulatory requirements. “We are in an intensively competitive industry with hundreds of strong players when it comes to manufacturing medical components and assemblies; however, few competitors can provide the depth of metrology expertise that we do,” asserts Jim Westman, the CEO of The Octex Group. The company follows a unique metrology procedure which allows them to move their customers’ medical device manufacturing programs through its validation process at an expedited pace.

Manufacturers—and especially OEMs—face a substantial amount of difficulty while outsourcing injection molding manufacturing. They struggle to find a supplier that can provide truly comprehensive service offerings customized to their specific needs. Product launch timelines are yet another challenge that requires a validation process for new and complex medical programs, which is extensive and time-consuming. “Our team is extremely good at determining our customer’s pain points and researching and implementing solutions to make their lives easier,” comments Westman. The Octex Group provides advanced metrology, tooling, and production capabilities under one roof, and guides its customers through the validation process without the usual delays. The company is ideally positioned to help their clients discover potential design and manufacturing issues before their products are ever released in the market. The company provides high precision, scientific injection molding, and contract manufacturing solutions for the medical, technology, high-end consumer/industrial, and aerospace industries.

The Octex Group’s client onboarding process begins with a consultation session. An initial conversation is opened between them and new customers to help them understand their difficulty with new or existing programs. To further elaborate The Octex Group’s efficacy, Westman mentions a client story where a complex, high cavitation, thin-wall molding program was brought to the company for troubleshooting.

The customer had initially placed the program with another medical molder, but it was never launched due to a failure to achieve acceptable and consistent production parts. The part geometry required a wall thickness of 1/10th of the minimum recommended by the resin supplier. After months of failed effort, it was assumed that the required wall thickness was unachievable, and the component would need to be canceled or significantly redesigned.

Our team is extremely good at determining our customer’s pain points and researching and implementing solutions to make their lives easier

They were soon brought to Octex, whereupon arrival, the initial mold evaluation revealed that the co-polyester resin in a high shear environment was susceptible to high levels of outgassing, which required additional venting to the atmosphere.

After tooling improvements, the scientific injection molding(SIM) process kicked off with cavity balance studies. Although the components weighed less than a gram, the initial studies quickly highlighted a visible imbalance throughout the sixteen cavities. To achieve proper balance, every tool component in the critical stack was dismantled and measured with a mixture of traditional and computed tomography (CT) metrology. The components involved ranged from RJG sensors, core pins, cavities, cavity blocks, and custom-built vent pins. Through a combination of component matching and new custom modifications, The Octex Group was able to achieve a standard deviation of 17 millionths of an inch between all 16 stacks. Once completed, the co-polyester material was successfully manufactured at a fraction of the recommended wall thickness (~1/10th), and the end results yielded a less than one defective part per million run rate throughout 10 million components.

The Octex Group has a 5 year plan to open, or acquire, a second facility to add both capacity and geographic reach. “Our current customer base is primarily east of the Mississippi with concentrations in both Florida and the North East. We are working to extend our name recognition and customer development activities beyond our current geographic boundaries, and the success of these efforts will determine the location of our next facility,” concludes Westman.

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Company
The Octex Group

Headquarters
Sarasota, FL

Management
Brett Wigton, CTO and Jim Westman, CEO

Description
Established in 1990, The Octex Group is a future first organization providing high precision, scientific injection molding and contract manufacturing solutions for the medical, technology, high-end consumer and industrial and aerospace industries. The company is specialized in the contract manufacture of high precision plastics parts, from engineering, R&D, production, assembly, packaging, and distribution. The clients can leverage their suite of services so that the client’s product gets to market faster, better, and more cost-effectively. The company utilizes the most advanced technology to be an innovative plastics solution partner and thereby delivering quality products to market while meeting the challenges of the customers