Success built on trust
Just as patients put their trust in the tools used to treat their bodies, the creators of those tools put their trust in their suppliers. When it comes to the production of highly precise, high-value drills, taps, reamers, wires, and a variety pins and screws for global orthopedic companies, global medical device developer and manufacturer Elos Medtech puts itstrust in Tornos Swiss-type lathes.
Jodie Gilmore, president of Elos Medtech’s orthopedics division, and Chris Weeden, manufacturing engineer at the company’s Memphis (United States) site.
Elos Medtech’s strong commitment to quality excel- lence is clearly paying off: The company reported a 13.6 percent increase in net sales in the first quarter of 2022. Active in three primary markets—ortho- pedics, dental, and diversified life sciences—Elos Medtech has a particularly strong position in ortho- pedics and high technical competence in that market. Foresight, flexibility, responsiveness, and meticulous attention to detail are absolutely essential to the company’s continued growth—and Elos Medtech is passionately committed to being the partner that goes above and beyond to meet these needs.
Its Tornos machine fleet makes a valuable contribu- tion to that effort. Today, the Gothenburg, Sweden- based publicly traded company owns 60 Tornos Swiss-type machines and has two more—plus a new Tornos MultiSwiss multispindle machine—on order. Elos Medtech’s Tornos machine fleet is spread out globally across three of the company’s five sites, Memphis (United States) site, Timmersdala, Sweden, and in Tianjin, China.
“We want to make sure that we’re consistently staying ahead of the curve and employing the best and latest machine technology.”
Jodie Gilmore, president of Elos Medtech’s orthope- dics division, explains that the growing company is laser-focused on staying at the forefront of technol- ogy.
“We never compromise on quality and are committed to quality excellence in everything we do. We want to be able to make sure that, not only with the compe- tence of our people but also in the machine technolo- gies we’re using, we have the best in machine tech- nology. From a forward-looking perspective, we want to continue to do that,” she says, noting that Elos’ Medtech’s five-year strategy includes the purchase of a significant number of Swiss-type lathes.
“We are growing significantly and within the overall company we are growth-focused and really investing to maintain that momentum—and orthopedics is definitely no exception.” Gilmore
Made in Memphis with Swiss-type technology
At Elos Medtech’s second-largest site in Memphis, which typically produces 3 to 4 million orthopedic parts per year in batch sizes averaging
500 parts each, Tornos solutions play an important role. The majority of those parts are at some point machine on a Tornos Swiss-type lathe.
Chris Weeden, manufacturing engineer at the Memphis site, has relied on Tornos’ Swiss-type lathes—today including two DECO 13s, a DECO 13 bi, seven DECO 20s, and 10 Swiss GT 26s—for more than 20 years. Those machines are put to the test daily in the production of precision products that must per- form in a rigorous biological environment where they are subjected to significant loads.
“Most everything we make cuts, pierces, or fixates bone, and it’s incredibly important that every part we make performs well, works the first time, and doesn’t break,” Gilmore emphasizes. “Of course, anytime you’re in the medical device industry, customers want you to have significant expertise—not just saying, ‘Oh, we can do this,’ but the ability that we have demonstrated for decades.”
Medical device companies want to work with suppli- ers that are best-in-class experts—and Elos Medtech more than meets that criterion.
“A company, for example, focuses on the total joint implant—the development and creation of the joint, essentially—and other key systems. Then we come alongside and support them in our areas of specialty,” says Gilmore.
Coming of age with Tornos
Weeden came of age using Tornos machines—and he swears by them.
“I’ve been around Tornos Swiss-type machines for my whole career and I’ve always really, really liked them. They seemed to be way ahead of the curve early in the game. When I first started back in 2003, the Tornos machines just had so many more capabilities than some of the others on the market at the time, which drew our attention,” Weeden says. “The DECO 20s and DECO 13s allow you to support your work on the front while you are working on the last part on the back work.”
The DECOs’ capabilities make a big difference, he adds.
“I’ve been around Tornos Swiss-type machines for my whole career and I’ve always really, really liked them.”
“The DECO gives you so many options. It has so many capabilities that we can support things while we thread and while we work because the machine has independent access and gangs that allow us to do that. Since we run so many long cylindrical parts, supporting them is key to us,” Weeden explains, noting that most of the parts machined in Memphis are stainless steel and range from 150 to 460 mm in length and up to 0.39 mm in diameter. “The DECO machine has met every need we’ve ever had. I’ve always liked the TB-DECO programming. You can write 1 program and then the TB-DECO software allows you to ask questions, so you could take 1 pro- gram and program 20 part numbers if they were in the same family.”
Weeden is also a fan of Tornos’ modular tooling.
“You mount your tool, and there’s an external pre- setter in the holder provided,” he says. “That makes for a bit less operator error because the operator doesn’t have to set each individual tool every time. That can even be done offline before you take it to the machine.”
There is a special place in Weeden’s heart for one par- ticular DECO machine at the Memphis site.
“It’s a DECO 20 and it was here when I came to work here in 2003—and we call it Big T,” he says, laugh- ing as he notes that “Big T” and the DECO 13s that greeted him in 2003 are still running today.
And as much as he loves the Tornos DECO machines, Weeden is also impressed with the Swiss GT line.
“We’ve been buying a lot of those machines and they have performed really well,” he says.
Relationships count, too
While the capabilities of Tornos machines are head turners, relationships make a difference, too, and though Elos services its own machines on the Memphis site, Weeden knows he can turn to Tornos’ technical experts when he runs into a problem he can’t solve alone.
“Tornos Service Manager Roland Schutz is absolutely outstanding. We don’t often have to call Tornos Service because we do a lot of our own work, but he is the one to call. Roland knows the Tornos machines backward and forward—every bolt on the DECO 20,” says Weeden. “I know that if I can get hold of Roland, I can get it fixed.”
Gilmore notes that from a corporate perspective, it is important for Elos Medtech to have attentive and proactive suppliers. She is always looking to increase dialogue with Elos Medtech customers as well as supply chain partners.
“It would be our hope that we can continue to work with companies like Tornos to really understand the path forward and where the technology is going,” she says. “We want to make sure that we’re consistently staying ahead of the curve and employing the best and latest machine technology.”
Elos Medtech
Torsgatan 5B
SE-411 04 Gothenburg Sweden
Phone: +46 10 171 20 00
info@elosmedtech.com elosmedtech.com