Thinking small

With surgical and interventional procedures becoming increasingly less invasive, medical devices need to be be reduced in size to fit through smaller incisions.

And while engineers have the know-how to design such small instruments, the ability to manufacture them — especially those with multiple moving parts — can be difficult.

One US company, California-based

, hopes to turn complex designs into working devices using EFAB fabrication technology inspired by computer chips.

The technique, the company claims, can produce tiny mechanisms with dozens of moving parts — without the need for assembly.

It works by forming and stacking sets of thin metal layers in the same way a loaf of bread might be assembled from individual slices.

'There really isn't a technology like ours,' said Adam Cohen, Microfabrica's chief technology officer. 'We have aspects that are comparable to precision metal working and to micro electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) technology. We're in some ways a hybrid.'

EFAB is a volume production process that uses tooling to create thousands of functional metal devices with micron-scale features.