Alleima - Business Unit Medical

Alleima 

Alleima is a global world-leading developer and manufacturer of stainless steel and advanced alloys for the most demanding industries. In its medical unit, it manufactures high-quality ultra-fine wire and wire-based components used in medical devices to sense and transmit signals in or outside the human body or for stimulation therapies such as neurostimulation.  The company also manufactures strip, ultra-fine tubes and offers extensive plating capabilities of wire or parts used in medical devices. Devices that every day are part of improving or even saving people’s lives.

Alleima offers over 200 medical alloys as standard and specially designed on request. Already today the company uses over 83% recycled material and more than 96% fossil-free electricity in its sites. Its fully integrated value chain, from R&D and melting to end-product, allows the company to provide industry-leading technology, quality, sustainability, and circularity.

Alleima also supports product design and surface treatments such as polymer coatings or electroplating. The company also offers ultra-thin tubes for medical applications. With the acquisition of Alleima Karlsruhe GmbH in 2022, formerly Endosmart,  the offering has expanded to include nitinol, the shape memory alloy that is required in many of the medical devices of the future, for example in robot surgery or advanced endoscopic applications.

Background to Alleima

31st of August 2021 Sandvik Materials Technology was renamed Alleima. The company continues to be a world-leading player in the development and manufacturing of advanced stainless steel and special alloys.

In Alleima the company has found a name that encapsulates the core and uniqueness of what they are doing. It will enable them to position themselves as the technology leader, progressive customer partner, and sustainability driver that they are. Several factors were important when choosing a new name, most importantly the name should support the brand positioning and platform and convey a story about who Alleima is as a company.

The name Alleima combines two cornerstones of the business – alloys (an old version of the word alloy – “alei”) and materials, linking to the heritage and future offering. The name is very different from the names of the competitors and very different from the name “Sandvik”. This has been a conscious decision – it enables a fresh start, and the name has high differentiation potential in the industries they are operating in. 

For more information, please visit www.alleima.com/wire

Contact information:

Alleima Karlsruhe GmbHWilhelm-Schickard-Str. 9c 76131 KarlsruheGermanyE-mail: info.ka@alleima.com

Alleima Advanced MaterialsCommerce Blvd.Palm Coast, FL, 32164United StatesTelephone: +1 386 445-2000, Fax: +1 386 447-5113E-mail: ms.spc@alleima.com

Products

Working with more than 200 alloys, and specializing in choosing the best materials and configurations, wire-based components from Alleima are used for a variety of medical applications including vascular therapy, biosensing, and neurostimulation. So far, they have been used for devices such as;

Vascular therapy:

• Catheters and guidewires: Medical wire requires good corrosion and moderate tensile strength, fatigue, and relaxation resistance.
• Pacing leads: Medical wire will generally need ultra-high strength, ductility, toughness, and very good corrosion resistance.
• Alleima 12R10 HV medical wire and Alleima 316LVM medical wire are used for these sensors, catheters, and heart mapping/monitoring devices

Cochlear remediation:

• Cochlear implants: Alleima offers high-quality medical wires produced from platinum-iridium alloys to be encased in the silicone of the implant’s electrode array.
• Middle ear implants: These devices require a tightly coiled metal wire for sound transmission. Alleima offers coiled wires with a polymer or PTFE coating.
• Bone conducting systems: Medical wire is used in these devices to help transmit energy to the transducer that is directly in contact with the skull.

Sensing solutions:

• Thermocouple: Two or more wires made from different metals are coupled to provide a variable EMF response at different temperatures.
• Glucose sensor: This device requires a fine wire for a sensor thinner than a needle.
• Electrical sensors: Alleima categorizes these devices into multi-electrode arrays and tetrodes

Stimulation therapy:

• Deep brain stimulations: Alleima offers high-quality conductive wires with high durability properties. These form an essential part of modern neurostimulation devices.

The ultra-fine wire is also used in other microtechnology devices. Besides ultra-fine wire Alleima also produces micro-tubes and strip steel for various microtechnology and medical applications, for example, EMG needles, scalpels, or bown saws.

Regarding the materials selection the Alleima range includes stainless steels (such as Alleima 12R10 medical wire), carbon steel (such as Alleima 20AP medical wire), precious metals (including platinum-iridium, pure gold, and silver), cobalt-chromium-molybdenum alloys (such as Alleima F562 medical wire), sensor alloys (constantan and copper) and Kanthal® resistance alloys (such as Nikrothal® 80 and Cuprothal® 49).

Added value 

The precision wire components are manufactured from stainless steels, precious metals, and biocompatible alloys, creating customizable high-quality wire solutions. Alleima's ability to develop custom designs to meet customers’ goals is already setting us apart from the competition in the medical and microtechnology devices field. 

There are unlimited customizations available, and we are invested in ensuring that the end product is high-quality, effective, and sustainable. Customers can choose from a variety of materials, sizes, surface treatments, and product forms.

Extensive experience in material properties not only allows us to offer customers expert advice on the best components functionality and manufacturing options to reach their end goal, but also guarantees quality unmatched by the competition. Our focus has been continuing to develop close customer partnerships by offering made-to-order build-to-print solutions, setting us apart from other suppliers.

Added value operations:

• Medical wire-components, ribbon, multi-filar, and stranded cables can be precisely cut to the customer’s requested length.
• Customized diameters. Diameter can range from 0,007mm to 1,0 mm depending on the alloy, shape, temper, and required measurement, while length can be between 5 mm to 1800 mm, depending on the application.
• If required, wire straightening can be performed in accordance with ASTM F2819 (unless specified otherwise).
• Depending on the size that the customer requires, Alleima's precision wire can be delivered in a variety of forms that typically comprise either spools, braider bobbins, straightened lengths, or coils. Customized coiling services are offered, ranging from free-standing inductive coils to single/multi-filar Heli coil configurations.

Alleima also offers a range of surface treatments to meet the needs of our customers:

• Anodizing: For aluminum alloys, reel-to-reel electrolytic passivation enhances the natural oxidation layer, resulting in improved electrical insulation, as well as a more abrasive-resistant surface. It can be applied to round or ribbon wire and the average layer is between 0.005mm and 0.010 mm.
• Coating: Customizations include base polymer insulation and PTFE coatings to withstand temperatures up to 240°C, as well as solvent or heat-activatable bond coatings for free-standing coils or joining wires. The coatings can also be pigmented for identification purposes. Alleima offers stripping services to remove the polymer coating from the ends of the wire.
• Electroplating and electropolishing: From ultrasonic wire bonding to enhancing electrical properties, Alleima offers electroplated alloys such as hard and soft gold, nickel, and silver for surface finish modification. Available electroplating treatments are silver, rhodium, palladium, copper, gold, fine gold, tin, and nickel. The typical deposit thickness range is 0.13 to 1.3 microns. Alleima offers reel-to-reel or "barrel" plating which is perfect for micro-parts.

When manufacturing medical wire, hygiene is essential, so Alleima operates in an ISO Class 7 certified cleanroom for various production stages. The environment is fully controlled using HEPA filters, laminar flow cabinets, and exhaust hoods to optimize air particle count, air pressure, temperature, and any other factor that could affect product quality.