About two years ago, in May 2008, NDC regained its independence as a privately held company. To celebrate our one year anniversary, in May 2009, we launched a new brand identity and website at www.nitinol.com. This year, for our two year anniversary, we introduce a new feature of the website, NitinolUniversity.com. Read on for more… Read more »
Now in its third year, the FDA / NHLBI / NSF Workshop on Computer Methods for Cardiovascular Devices brings together a unusual mix of folks from industry, academia, regulatory, and funding organizations. This year’s theme focuses on the integration of nonclinical and computer models. Like previous years, a common thread has been the need for sharing and collaboration, especially in the area of biomechanics data and modeling methodologies. Last year, Craig advocated an open source model for medical development, and this year, he presented a collection of creative commons licensed resources for Open Stent Design. Read on for the slides… Read more »
At the recent SMST conference, we presented our Open Stent Design for the first time, and received lot of great feedback from the crowd. We previously introduced the idea here, and posted a detailed manuscript describing the CAD model and theory behind the calculations. Today. we have posted the Stent Calculator worksheet to the same page. Read more »
In this introduction to the second chapter of Nitinol: The Book, Tom introduces the shape memory effect as it relates to phase transformations in metals. Read more »
In Chapter 2 of Nitinol: The Book, Tom introduces some basic principles of phase transformations in metals. As unusual as Nitinol is, the superelastic and shape memory properties driving these a byproduct of phase transformations that are ubiquitous in virtually all materials. Read on to learn more, including why Napoleon’s Russian invasion failed because of a phase transformation… Read more »
In this SMST-2010 presentation, Craig advocates for applying some principles from the open source and creative commons movements to medical implant design. Power to the people! This project was first introduced in a previous post, and has a permanent home at the Open Stent Design feature page. The slide show embedded below was presented at Asilomar today, and it’s offered under a creative commons attribution-share alike license – you’re free to download, adapt, and reuse the content within simple terms of the license. The presentation gives an overview of the Open Stent Design project, and presents results from some trend analysis and statistical exploration of inputs and outputs. Read on for more… Read more »
In this SMST-2010 presentation, Jennifer presents data comparing the corrosion and biocompatibility performance of wire formed and laser cut stents having virtually identical starting geometry. Both groups were electropolished to remove <5%, <10%, and <25% material. Results indicate that the corrosion resistance increases with the amount material removal, and less material removal is required for wire formed stents to achieve comparable performance. Read on for more… Read more »
“Killer App” may not be the best term to use to describe a medical component, but if such a thing exists in the world of Nitinol, its the vascular stent. In the past fifteen years or so, these tiny metallic scaffolds have changed the practice of medicine, improved the lives of countless people around the world, and have dominated the landscape of Nitinol component manufacturing. At NDC, we’ve made more of these beautiful little objects than we can count, and we are frequently asked to help current and prospective customers improve their designs, develop new ones, perform testing and analysis, run simulations, and more. Today, we are pleased to release some resources and tools that we have developed to help new and experienced designers get started with stent design. Read on for more… Read more »
What does the future hold for Nitinol? In this chapter, Tom speculates about the potential of shape memory applications, R-phase, and such emerging technologies as thin-film constructs, and porous Nitinol. Read on for more… Read more »
Nitinol isn’t the only shape memory game in town, though its unique combination of properties has made it the most commercially successful. Did you know that there are alloys of brass, bronze, and iron, that also exhibit shape memory effects? In this post, Tom discusses some of the other materials with unusual shape memory properties. Read on for more.. Read more »
