To help medical device developers and manufacturers take full advantage of the unique properties of nitinol for cardiovascular devices, surgical robotics and other minimally invasive technologies, Medical Design & Outsourcing is diving deep into the supply chain with leading nitinol suppliers.

Our latest interview is with Resonetics Nitinol Business Development VP Eric Veit, who discussed market forces driving nitinol prices and lead times.

“Resonetics actually started as a laser integrator,” Veit said in an interview. “So we build equipment — we build equipment for our customers even — and that helps us to be able to scale because we build our own lasers, nitinol processing equipment like shape-setting equipment, salt bath ovens and electropolishing stations. We have a design services group with extensive nitinol expertise as well.”

Resonetics became one of the world’s top nitinol melters in October 2023 with its $900 million purchase of the SAES Getters medical nitinol business.

A few months later, competitor Confluent Medical Technologies partnered with nitinol melter ATI. We recently interviewed Confluent Medical Technologies Chief Commercial Officer Doug Hutchison about nitinol price increases in the wake of those melting deals.

While Veit acknowledged nitinol prices have increased in recent years, he said Resonetics hasn’t increased prices as much as Confluent, though he declined to offer specific pricing or changes for competitive reasons.

“For the most part, there were no increases for SAES melt products (now Resonetics) for the past several years, and if there were, they were in the low, single-digit increases,” Veit said in a presentation to MDO in response to our questions. “In 2024, we did go through a cost exercise to evaluate increases in standard production costs like labor, utilities and raw materials, and made pricing adjustments on a case-by-case basis.”

“Tube prices across all competitors remained fairly stable for years until the combination of the pandemic, gun-drilling consolidation and demand increased prices,” he continued. “These increases were also in line with inflationary pressures and market demands. … At the component level, material prices increased, but depending on the level of processing that goes into that part, it’s less of a factor. [Those were] also single-digit increases in line with inflation.”

Resonetics sells three grades of nitinol melt: standard, Redox, and Enduro. All exceed ASTM standards, but prices increase for the higher purity material due to additional work and processing.

Related: Nitinol machining and finishing for medical devices

“Price differences are also driven by the size of the bar, the starting material properties of the melt and other factors, so it is challenging to apply a percent difference by pound,” Veit said. “That is why it is important to understand the differences, so that the right material can be used for your particular application. Is it a catheter application or is there a requirement for high durability? The answer will drive which material is needed and may also impact your timelines.”

Nitinol lead times for melt, tubing, wires, sheets and components

Nitinol melt lead times remained stable across the industry for years until the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which caused an increase in demand from the aerospace industry, Veit said.

“The same companies that post-process material for Resonetics and nearly all other melters experienced this impact,” he said. “Lead times became less predictable. Melted bar stock capacity was not an issue. At Resonetics we are operating at less than 50% of our melt capacity. The delays were due to the post-processing.”

Nitinol manufacturing: How this nickel-titanium alloy is melted for medical devices

Lead times for nitinol tubing similarly increased across the industry, with Veit saying lead times increased from 10-12 weeks to more than double that, and “nearly a year” in some cases.

“This was due in large part to the increases in gun drilling times, and a lowering of available nitinol bar as suppliers worked through their development and validation of alternative gun drillers, thus requiring more bars than normally required,” Veit said.

“Our lead times jumped as well but not as dramatically,” he later continued. “We did not do a great job of communicating the increases, however, and this led to additional concerns about the stability of the supply.”

Medical nitinol processing: How NiTi is turned into wire, tubes and sheets for devices

“Although our lead times are some of the best in the industry right now, they are not yet where we want them to be,” he said. “We are making major changes to fix that. We have validated additional gun drilling capacity, added additional gun drillers, and created kanbans of base raw material at each of the processing steps in the tube-drawing process as well as in the melt process. That will not only help our lead times for Resonetics tube, but it will help our customers who buy bar from us to draw their own tube.”

Resonetics is quoting nitinol components within a day and producing prototypes in one or two weeks if material’s available, whether that material comes from Resonetics or a competitor, he said. “We are open to using the best material for the application and speed.”

Just as it uses nitinol melt and tubing from other companies, Resonetics also supplies melt to its competitors: “Basically everyone,” Veit said. “… We don’t have restrictions.”

Now that Resonetics melts its own nitinol, the company is aiming to integrate all the steps from raw nitinol production to finished medical device to improve the final product.

“Memry always used to have this tagline, ‘From melt to market.’ But what they were really missing was the feedback,” Veit said.

“They always had a reputation for high quality hypotube but not so much for precision tubing where dimensions and microstructure was important, like tube used in stent applications with high fatigue requirements,” he said in a follow-up email to clarify. “I think that was because they weren’t really using the feedback, for example if they were making stents, and put that feedback back into tube improvements. And if they were making tube, they weren’t putting that feedback back to the melting side. So, we’re making that connection now and really bridging the link from melt, to semi-finished, to components. That link has driven us to make dramatically better premium tube.”