Development of polishing technology for titanium used in surgical implants

Currently, in the Brazilian market, the reservoirs implanted for chemotherapy are being manufactured and commercialised in stainless steel (ASTM F138), which supplies the demand in adult patients. Lighter reservoirs, which are made with biomedical grade titanium (ASTM F67), are needed to treat infants and babies. In this case, the national production is still custom made owing to the manual polishing which requires some 2–3 h to provide a mirror finish. Besides that, the cost of the imported models is very high. Therefore, the main purpose of the present work is to improve the polishing technology for the biomedical grade titanium used for surgical implant applications through the electrochemical polishing technique. With the application of this technique an R_a value of 0·3 µm on the internal surface of the reservoirs should be reached. This degree of finishing is necessary on all the titanium surfaces that will come into contact with the blood stream, in order to prevent or to reduce the risk of thrombus formation. This study makes the production of these titanium reservoirs two-thirds less expensive than the imported models and they will be available in a shorter time.