Method and system for establishing and monitoring a needle swaging procedure

A system for establishing a pressure for swaging sutures to needles, comprising:

• means to insert sutures into the needles;
• means to apply a variable swaging pressure to the needles to swage the needles to the sutures;
• means to adjust said swaging pressure;
• means to apply a pulling force to the sutures to break the sutures from the needles;
• means to measure the pulling forces required to break the sutures from the needles;
• means to hold a data base;
• means to add to the data base pulling values representing said measured pulling forces;
• and
• a processor including
• i) means for performing a routine to calculate an average of the pulling values in the data base, to compare the calculated average values to a first range, and to compare at least selected ones of the calculated average values to a second range, and
• ii) means to repeat said routine when one of the average values is inside the first range and outside the second range, and to terminate the routine when one of the average values is inside the second range.

A method for analyzing a needle swaging procedure, comprising the steps of:

• inserting sutures into needles;
• applying a swaging pressure to the needles to swage the needles to the sutures;
• applying pulling forces to the sutures to break the sutures from the needles;
• measuring the pulling forces required to break the sutures from the needles;
• using a first test to analyze first sets of the measured pulling forces;
• using a second test to analyze second sets of the measured pulling forces;
• and
• using a processor to record all the pulling forces analyzed in the first and second tests on a common table.