How Pilot Line Is Filling the Gap in Medical Device ManufacturingHow Pilot Line Is Filling the Gap in Medical Device Manufacturing
Pilot Line, founded by Alex Espinosa, was created to address the gap in the medical device manufacturing market by offering quick-to-buy, in-stock production equipment that saves time and costs for engineers.
January 29, 2025
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At a Glance
- The company’s Hydrophilic Coating System allows for fast, reliable coating and UV curing of medical devices in-house.
- Pilot Line will be exhibiting at booth #429 during MD&M West.
Pilot Line, a company that provides production equipment for medical manufacturers, will be at booth 429 during MD&M West. Alex Espinosa, the company’s founder and CEO spoke with MD+DI ahead of the show to discuss the impetus behind the company and some of its products.
Let’s talk a little bit about the company. Why was Pilot Line formed and what need does it fulfill in the market?
Espinosa: Well, before starting Pilot Line I worked as an R&D engineer in product development, mostly with medical devices. I was always part of a small team with limited budgets and infrastructure so when it came time to buy manufacturing equipment for a new project, we could never accept the cost or lead times of production machines. Inevitably my time would always be transferred away from developing the product, and instead I focused on developing machines to suit our needs. What my team really needed was a manufacturing solution that was quick to buy and set up, something to get us to the next business milestone. I noticed this happening again and again and eventually saw the opportunity to help with this gap in the market. Luckily, I'd already acquired some experience from both the user side and developer side of medical device manufacturing equipment.
What markets do you serve? Is it strictly medical?
Espinosa: We do focus on medical device manufacturing as our primary market. It's a natural fit because that's where we come from. We understand the needs of our medical customers because we've been there. But it's always interesting to see how our machines are used for other markets. We've sold to a few customers in the aviation, automotive and even jewelry industries.
Let’s talk about how Pilot Lines is able to help clients save time with their projects.
Espinosa: I loved watching Mr. Spacely yell "Time is money Jetson!" at George from "The Jetsons". I never really understood that phrase as a child, but it made sense as soon as I started my career. It's true for all companies but especially for companies working with a fixed amount of capital which translates to fixed project schedules. If you can save three months by buying an in-stock, off-the-shelf solution to get your product designed faster, that translates into a huge time and therefore cost savings. Those extra three months could allow for extra design iterations, it could give you more time to refine your user needs or create a more robust regulatory submission. The extra time helps our customers succeed with their projects. One of the ways we’ve solidified our in-stock commitment is by partnering with Chamfr. We share the commitment to make products available in-stock for engineers.
What are some of the solutions that Pilot Line has developed?
Espinosa: Many of our products originate from the needs of a catheter manufacturing line since that's where our R&D design experience was focused. So, we've developed machines such as our Wire Straightening and Cutting Machine, which was intended for making SPC mandrels from spooled material. We've also developed machines that perform catheter reflowing, mandrel removal, mandrel straightening, coil winding, and most recently hydrophilic dip coating and UV curing.
Can you talk a little bit about your newest product, the Hydrophilic Coater?
Espinosa: This is a machine that I've wanted to develop for a few years now. As a medical device engineer, I've had to apply hydrophilic coatings to prototypes for testing. And in the interest of speed, we attempted the process in-house with poor results. Let's just say that dipping products by hand and UV curing in the sunshine is not a consistent, repeatable process. So, our Hydrophilic Coating System was designed. The first step of any project is to define user needs, which is one of the reasons we partnered with Innovative Surface Technologies (ISurTec). They helped us design the right product from the start. We designed a machine that can reliably perform the entire coating process from primer to topcoat and all the UV curing in-between, with the push of a button.
Our coating machine surrounds a single device around 6 sides with 288 UVC LEDs along a length of 100 cm. This unique approach has several advantages. No heat, uniform UV exposure, stable light output, and environmentally friendly. Our curing chamber draws only 75 watts of electrical power. And since the LEDs turn on instantly, they only run while curing. That's a significant amount of energy savings compared to a system that burns several kilowatts for 8 hours per shift!
But the real advantage of our Coating Machine is speed. Our customers can prototype, coat, and test a design in-house in a matter of hours instead of waiting days (or weeks) for an external coating service. Imagine a complete coating station in your lab, occupying only 2’ x 2' of floor space, plugged into a standard outlet, ready to coat any time.
Can you talk about any trends that you’re seeing in the medtech?
Espinosa: It’s interesting to watch more user-assisted technology become widely accepted. For example, robotic surgery has become very popular with both surgeons and patients. It’s not uncommon to see a particular hospital brag about how many surgical robots they have. In the world of thrombectomy, there are several companies working on pumps with “intelligent” algorithms that help remove clots. And several technologies are working with conventional imaging systems, to either render 3D representations of scans, or even make decisions on imaging data based on AI models. In all of these cases, we’re handing over a little more trust to the machines we create. It will be interesting to see how our validation methods will evolve to ensure that we sustain or even improve patient safety.
Check out Pilot Line's multi-filar attachment for its Medical Coil Winder. It's easy to install and is backward compatible with older machines. Up to four Steeger bobbins can be loaded. Each bobbin can be tensioned individually for precise coiling.
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