Nightingale-EOS, based in Wrexham, Wales, UK, has received a substantial investment from Mercia Technology Seed Fund and Finance Wales, to help develop its laser-based measurement technology.
The investment boost releases additional grant funding from the Welsh Assembly Government to complete development of Nightingale's Beam Profile Reflectometry (BPR) technology, aimed at the medical device manufacturing market.
BPR is able to measure non-destructively the characteristics of the thin coatings applied to medical implants such as cardiac stents and replacement joints, using a single measurement to determine both coating thickness and composition. By making it easier and quicker to measure these characteristics, the technique can be used for in-line QA inspection as well as laboratory testing, thus providing medical device manufacturers with a low cost, robust solution for complying with the FDA’s Process Analytical Technology (PAT) initiative.
The company's development centre is in Wrexham and it will open an applications laboratory and sales office at the Coventry University Technology Park, where the West Midlands Manufacturing Measurement Centre (WMMMC) is also based.
