Product Code: ICAL08_M607

Laser Cutting for Medical Device (Stent) - Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (Invited Presentation - 40 Minutes)
Authors:
Li Chen, Abbott Vascular; Santa Clara CA USA
Presented at ICALEO 2008

Lasers are commonly used for welding; drilling, cutting, marking, and other material processing. One of the more demanding industrial laser applications is micro cutting. Laser cutting stent is a typical micro cutting application in the medical device industry. A stent is a small, mesh-like device made of metal. When a stent is placed inside of a coronary artery, it acts as a support or scaffold, keeping the vessel open. By keeping the vessel open, the stent helps to improve blood flow to the heart muscle and reduce the pain of angina. The first stent was inserted into a human coronary artery in 1986 in France. In 1994 the first Palmaz-Schatz stent (cut with laser) was approved for use in the United States. Over the next decade, several generations of bare metal stents were developed, for example, Abbott MULTI-LINK VISION Coronary Stent System. The MULTI-LINK VISION stent offers superb flexibility, the lowest profile and Excellent Clinical Results. The key requirements for stent cutting are small consistent kerf width, good surface quality with a minimum amount of slag and burr to reduce post-processing, the minimum heat affected zone (HAZ) which usually causes material embrittlement, as well as the cutting speed. Recent stent development presents more challenges for laser technology. Depending on the stent material and specs, high beam quality, excellent laser power stability, short pulses, short wavelength, or combination of them are required. This talk will present a review of laser cutting stent and also present prospective demands for advanced stent cutting.