Case Study: Medtronic achieves faster time-to-market and major tooling cost savings with Stratasys 3D printing

Innovation Comes to Life with 3D Printing

Medtronic’s Restorative Therapy Group (RTG) in Warsaw faced tooling as the critical path for getting medical devices into production — jigs, fixtures and gages had to be redesigned and deployed rapidly to keep 24/7 manufacturing cells running and accelerate time-to-market. To overcome long lead times and high machining costs, Medtronic turned to Stratasys and its FDM 3D printing technology to prototype and produce production-ready tooling on demand.

Stratasys’ FDM printers and industrial thermoplastics allowed Medtronic to design, print and deploy fixtures in hours to 1–5 days (often within 24 hours) versus 2–3 weeks with their internal shop or 6–8 weeks with external vendors. The change delivered measurable impact: parts cost about 80% less than machined equivalents, an estimated $6 million saved over four years, faster iteration and multiple fixture sets for continuous flow, reduced physical storage through digital inventories, and lighter ergonomic tools that improved safety and uptime.

Medtronic

Richard Booth

Senior Design Engineer