Plastikos Inc., a custom injection molder, and its sister company Micro Mold, both based in Erie, PA, have successfully commercialized disposable cartridge components made of cyclic olefin polymer (COC) for wearable drug delivery devices for medications such as insulin and pain medicines. Plastikos has commercial projects underway with U.S. drug delivery device manufacturers. Meanwhile, the company is also exploring uses for COC in other related drug delivery applications.

Plastikos shipped nearly 8 million parts during the past year. The precision disposable cartridges, which consist of several parts molded of COC from TOPAS Advanced Polymers, are manufactured under strict performance qualifications, including highly challenging tolerance levels and multi-cavity tooling.

“The challenging project included the design and construction of multi-cavity molds that range up to 32 cavities with fully interchangeable inserts among all cavities,” Rob Cooney, manufacturing manager for Plastikos, said. “To further mitigate the risk of shipping a single defective part, every cavity on each mold was designed and built with a cavity pressure sensor. This mold sensor technology is used to monitor every cycle in production and provides 100 percent traceability.

The company works with OEMs and material supplier TOPAS to produce complex geometries and tight tolerances down to less than 0.001 in. (0.025 mm), providing purity, drug compatibility, biocompatibility, and dimensional stability. The material delivers consistent, reproducible performance and facilitates miniaturization of drug delivery systems.

TOPAS COC offers a non-ionic, minimally reactive surface. The non-polar substrate does not promote adsorption, denaturation, aggregation, or precipitation.