Method of manufacturing a guidewire with an extrusion jacket
AssigneeSciMed Life Systems, Inc.
InventorsMatthew Solar, Richard Acevedo, Eric Welch, Scott Jones
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method of manufacturing a guidewire having a discrete length. The method includes the steps of feeding a first end of a corewire into an extrusion device, gripping the first end of the corewire with a gripping apparatus, and extruding a first extrusion material onto an outer surface of the corewire while the gripping apparatus pulls the corewire through the extrusion device to form an extrusion jacket on the outer surface of the corewire. The corewire has a predetermined length corresponding to a length of the guidewire.
Claims29
A method of manufacturing a discrete length guidewire having a taper, comprising the steps of:
- feeding a first end of a corewire into an extrusion device, the corewire having a predetermined length corresponding to a length of the guidewire;
- gripping the first end of the corewire with a gripping apparatus;
- and
- extruding a first extrusion material onto an outer surface of the corewire while the gripping apparatus pulls the corewire through the extrusion device to form an extrusion jacket on the outer surface of the corewire;
- wherein the extruding step includes:
- pulling a first portion of the corewire through the extrusion device with the gripping apparatus at a first linear speed;
- pulling a second portion of the corewire through the extrusion device with the gripping apparatus at a second linear speed greater than the first linear speed, so that the extrusion jacket forms the taper of the guidewire;
- and
- completely covering at least one of the first end and a second end of the corewire with the first extrusion material.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.