Medtech Part Volumes Are Climbing Faster Than Most Shops' Post-Processing Capacity
- Kirk Abolafia
- 1 day ago
- 7 min read
Robotic-assisted surgery, minimally invasive instruments, and drug delivery devices are all scaling part volume at once. Post-processing is the bottleneck they share.
Stryker's Mako system has now been used in more than two million robotic-assisted procedures, and robotic-assisted orthopedic surgery remains the fastest-growing segment in the surgical robotics market. And that isn't a one-off data point: minimally invasive surgical instruments (MIS) are expanding near a 9.5% CAGR, and drug delivery devices are growing faster than any other device category at roughly 12.4% CAGR (Grand View Research). Three very different areas of medtech are scaling part volumes at roughly the same time, and each one is encountering the same key challenge: today's post-processing methods that are accustomed to yesterday's part volumes. In this article, we explore why these volumes are exploding and how manufacturers should consider new postprocessing methods like PECM to mitigate this challenge.
Key Takeaways
Robotic-assisted orthopedic surgery is the highest-growth segment in surgical robotics. Specifically, instruments and accessories make up the fastest-growing revenue line in that market, with Stryker reporting 18% growth in that segment alone in its most recent reporting period (Nasdaq).
Rising obesity rates combined with an aging population are projected to push total knee and hip replacement incidences up a staggering 276% and 208% respectively by 2030, according to peer-reviewed modeling published in Osteoarthritis and Cartilage (PMC).
Notably, MIS instruments keep shrinking in feature size even as procedure counts climb, which leaves less accessible geometry for manual finishing and increased difficult postprocessing at-scale.
Drug delivery devices are also growing, but increasingly built around microneedle arrays and precision microhole geometries for the explosive growth of GLP-1 and insulin delivery, a market projected to grow from $82 billion in 2026 to $185.3 billion by 2033 (Grand View Research).
Manual and abrasive post-processing methods don't scale with part count the way production volume needs them to. PECM does because it machines and finishes in the same operation.
Orthopedics, Surgical Devices & Drug Delivery: Separate but United
Despite the differing underlying reasons, some of the fastest growing areas in medtech--orthopedics, surgical devices, and drug delivery devices--have a common thread: they are growing faster than manufacturers can handle. But first, why are these areas growing?
Robotic-assisted orthopedics, for instance, is scaling primarily because obesity and an aging population are driving more joint degeneration (and earlier in life). A ten-year study of over 12,000 primary hip and knee arthroplasty patients found obesity rates among surgical candidates climbing steadily across the study period, with a growing share of patients classified as severely or morbidly obese at the time of surgery (PMC). Researchers project total knee and hip replacement incidence to rise 276% and 208% respectively by 2030 (PMC). Every one of those procedures runs through robotic platforms like Mako, so every platform requires replaced or reprocessed bone screws, cannulated screws, and instrument hinges after each case.
MIS instruments are scaling for a related but distinct reason. Robotic assistance is letting surgeons perform procedures that used to require large incisions through openings a few millimeters wide. Hysterectomies are a well-documented example: this pushes end-effector components, gears, and joints toward smaller and more geometrically complex parts, which is the same feature set we covered in an earlier piece on PECM in surgical robotics: thin-wall flex-splines, strain wave gears, and stapler anvil pockets where surface quality above 0.1 µm Ra can keep a staple from closing correctly.
As for drug delivery devices: as GLP-1 and insulin therapies scale to meet rising diabetes and obesity treatment demand, delivery methods are shifting toward microneedle arrays and precision microhole geometries that control dosing and flow. Newer delivery mechanisms, like micro-needle jet injection systems designed to handle both standard and highly viscous sustained-release formulations, depend on arrays of precisely controlled microholes to achieve reliable subcutaneous delivery (PMC). The global GLP-1 receptor agonist market alone was valued at $66.4 billion in 2025 and is projected to nearly triple by 2033 (Grand View Research), and every device supporting that growth curve needs delivery hardware behind it. That makes it a machining problem just as much as a molding one.
It's worth noting that these three growth curves aren't independent trends that happen to overlap (obesity is directly tied to two of them). The same population driving up joint replacement volume through excess load on weight-bearing joints is, in many cases, the same population now being prescribed GLP-1 therapies, which in turn is driving demand for the injector and microneedle hardware behind that treatment category (PMC). A manufacturer serving one of these categories today has a reasonable chance of being asked to serve an adjacent one within a few years: one more reason post-processing capacity built for orthopedic volumes is critical.
Why the usual fixes don't scale
A few commonly used approaches to surface finishing run into volume limitations surprisingly quickly, and each one fails for a different structural reason rather than simple bad luck.
Manual finishing is a skill-dependent process, and skill doesn't scale linearly with headcount. Manual finishing depends on the operator; edge break consistency drifts across a shift, and headcount rarely grows at the same rate procedure volume does. Even experienced operators produce measurably different finishes from shift to shift and part to part, because the process relies on individual judgment rather than a fixed, repeatable parameter set.
A comparative study of robotic belt grinding versus manual grinding on surgical instrument surfaces found the automated process delivered materially more consistent surface quality than manual grinding across a production run (NCBI). Manual visual inspection compounds the problem: research on surgical instrument quality control has documented that small scratches, micro-cracks, and early-stage corrosion are frequently missed during manual inspection, a gap that becomes more consequential as batch sizes grow and inspection time per part gets compressed (arXiv).
Abrasive and media-based methods introduce a contamination risk that gets harder to control, not easier, at higher throughput. These methods risk embedding media in hinge components, cannulated screws, and other features with tight internal geometry, which is a documented failure mode in implantable and reusable instrument hardware rather than a hypothetical one. Peer-reviewed research on implant surface decontamination has repeatedly shown that residual media and surface debris are difficult to fully remove from complex geometries even with dedicated cleaning protocols, and that residual contamination is a recognized contributor to surgical site infection risk in reprocessed and reused surgical hardware (PMC).
Internal features like cross-drilled cannulated screw holes or instrument hinge pivots are exactly the geometries where abrasive media tends to lodge and where visual or even borescope inspection struggles to confirm it's gone. At low volume, a supplier can afford extra wash cycles and hand inspection to manage that risk. At the procedure volumes ortho and MIS are now scaling toward, that extra inspection step becomes its own bottleneck, and the cost of an occasional escape (a recall, a rejected lot, a failed audit) rises in step with the number of parts running through the process.
Finally, outsourcing secondary finishing solves a capability problem but reintroduces the capacity problem one supplier downstream. Outsourced secondary finishing adds turnaround time right when volume pressure is highest, stacking lead time on top of the capacity problem instead of solving it. It also multiplies the number of handoffs a part goes through between machining and final inspection, and each handoff is a point where parts can be damaged, mixed up, or delayed in transit or queue at a second facility. For device categories where volume is growing 9-18% a year, a finishing partner sized for last year's demand becomes a lead-time problem this year, and the supplier who owns the finishing step in-house is the one who isn't waiting on someone else's queue to hit a delivery date.
There's also a cost dimension that compounds as volume rises.
Manual and outsourced finishing are typically priced (and staffed) on a per-part or per-batch basis, so cost scales roughly linearly with volume, with no efficiency gained as throughput increases. A supplier who deburrs 500 bone screws a month and one who deburrs 5,000 a month are paying close to the same rate per part, and often absorbing more overtime and rework cost at the higher volume as fatigue and inspection backlogs creep in. That's the opposite of how a scaling process should behave. A process should get more efficient per part as volume increases, not less, and that's a large part of why automated, non-contact methods look increasingly attractive to manufacturers modeling out demand through the end of the decade.
PECM: What Scales Instead
PECM (pulsed electrochemical machining) removes material through a non-contact electrochemical reaction rather than mechanical or thermal contact. That has two direct implications for high-volume medtech parts. Tool wear stays minimal across a production run, so edge geometry and surface finish stay consistent from part one to part ten thousand, a repeatability requirement that manual and abrasive methods struggle to guarantee at volume. PECM also machines and finishes in a single operation, which actually shortens the post-processing bottleneck instead of moving it downstream.
The same process family that produces burr-free bone screw cross-holes and titanium instrument hinges also produces the precision microhole arrays drug delivery devices increasingly need. That overlap matters for suppliers, since the equipment and process control built for one high-growth medtech category tends to transfer directly to another.
Capability / Specs Snapshot
Metric | Typical PECM capability |
Materials handled | Titanium, cobalt-chrome, hardened stainless steel |
Edge break repeatability | Consistent across full production batches, part-to-part |
Surface finish achievable | Down to fractions of a µm Ra on relevant alloys |
Contact/media exposure | None, so there's no embedded media risk |
Feature scalability | Complex geometries (microholes, thin walls, gear profiles) replicate at volume with a single cathode design |
Robotic ortho, MIS instrumentation, and drug delivery devices aren't scaling for the same reason, but they're scaling on the same timeline. For suppliers into any of these categories, post-processing capacity is likely to become the binding constraint before raw machining capacity does. It's worth evaluating now, before volume forces the decision later.
Contact us at info@voxelinnovations.com to talk through scaling post-processing.
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