From Custom Orthotics to Large-scale Application: How Hongjiao Medical Leverages Raise3D for the Flexible Production of Medical Devices

Project Background

In the medical field, customization implies extremely high demands for precision, reliability, and delivery timeliness. Hongjiao Medical’s main products – orthotics, preoperative models, and surgical guides, need to closely conform to the patient’s anatomy while meeting clinical application standards. In early 3D printing applications, production gradually faced three major bottlenecks:

1. Limited production capacity: Traditional single-nozzle printer cannot process a pair of assistive devices simultaneously, resulting in low equipment utilization and difficulty in supporting continuously growing clinical orders.
2. Pressure on delivery cycle: Preoperative models and surgical guides are highly time-sensitive, and insufficient printing efficiency directly affects the delivery cycle.
3. Insufficient stability of flexible materials: Flexible materials used in insoles, such as TPU, are prone to deformation and clogging during the printing process, affecting production continuity and product consistency.

At the same time, in the process of promoting the compliance of medical devices, Hongjiao Medical has also put forward higher requirements for the consistency, stability and repeatability of 3D printers, and urgently needs a systematic solution that achieves both efficiency and quality.

Raise3D’s Solution

To cope with the pressure of production capacity and clinical delivery, Hongjiao Medical introduced the Raise3D digital manufacturing solution in its production workshop. Through the coordinated deployment of the E3 and E2, Hongjiao Medical has gradually established its stable production capacity for medical scenarios.

• IDEX: Both the E3 and E2 adopt the IDEX design, enabling both Duplication Mode and Mirror Mode. Combined with a maximum printing speed of 200 mm/s, it can print simultaneously paired products such as two insoles, upgrading the production mode from single-piece manufacturing to parallel production, improving overall efficiency by about 50%.

• Flexible Filament Auxiliary Feeder: The E3 can be equipped with Raise3D’s Flexible Filament Auxiliary Feeder, effectively improving flexible filament feeding stability, reducing jamming, and enabling long-term continuous and stable printing.

When equipped with the Flexible Filament Auxiliary Feeder, the E3 is compatible with flexible filaments of Shore (A) hardness between 95A and 80A, as well as all Shore D hardness filaments, ensuring both efficiency and molding consistency. Hongjiao Medical uses TPU-95A to print personalized orthopedic insoles and PLA to create preoperative models. The finished products show good consistency, meeting the precision and reliability requirements of medical applications.

• ideaMaker software: Hongjiao Medical highlighted the value of ideaMaker slicing software. Rapid switching of material parameters reduces debugging costs. For different materials such as TPU and PLA, the slicing profiles provide standardized parameters, improving production efficiency and consistency.

“We primarily use Raise3D E3 and E2 to print custom insoles and preoperative models. In the past, our biggest headache was the inability to produce multiple models simultaneously, which hampered efficiency. Thanks to Raise3D printers, this has become a reality.”

– Songzi Xu, Deputy Head of Production and Procurement at Hongjiao Medical