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The Picocyl Story

Need is the Mother
of Invention

Sourcing a Micro-Gas-Filled Cylinder

Picocyl’s story began in early 2012 at an innovative medical delivery device company. This company planned to commercialize various self-powered, single-use, handheld medical devices based on the then market-branded “micro”-gas-filled cylinders for power source platforms. Consistent with other projects and the company’s business model of outsourcing and using off-the-shelf components wherever possible, a global sourcing activity was initiated. The sourcing journey took the project’s leadership team to Europe, Asia and North America. They discovered that all available manufacturing sources were focused on industrial and automotive markets, with no regard to medical device quality standards.

The company’s project team had high expectations for the gas-filled cylinders since these platforms could be used for life-threatening applications – the gas-filled cylinders needed to perform 100% of the time. Additionally, the cylinders needed to be smaller than “micro”; the company’s team needed what later became the market-branded “pico” size cylinders. The available sources used industrial grade steel and were plated after the gas filling, making it extremely expensive, if not impossible to verify the required amount of gas in the cylinder to meet device specifications.

After over a year of searching, the company disappointedly concluded that if the projects were to continue they would need to invest in not only designing the gas-filled cylinders and actuators, but also create a new manufacturing plant with new processes for supplying the needed gas-filled cylinders. In late 2014, the seed for Picocyl was planted.

The Picocyl design team and early founders met the challenge and developed the world’s first “pico”-sized stainless steel cylinder with a low-force breakaway cap and precision-matched actuator mechanism.

Our solution centered around providing the right amount of stored energy for the task and the minimum gas actuation force possible. Our goal was to deliver the smallest, most capable medical-grade power source to allow the surgical device designers to produce the most ergonomic and effective device available.

In early 2017, a new building was constructed, with a state-of-the-art class 8 cleanroom for the sole purpose of manufacturing pico-cylinders for the medical industry. Proprietary manufacturing processes and custom automated equipment were created and validated to enable the first manufacturing plant in the world to provide a source for medical device gas-filled cylinders.

We Are Here to Help You

How can Picocyl best be a solution provider for your automated medical device power needs?

There’s more to it than just sourcing a cylinder of compressed gas:

  • You need confidence that the gas-filled cylinder is leak free and you need a reliable method to release the gas within your device.
  • You need assurances that the right amount of gas with the specified pressure is sealed reliably.
  • You need traceability and a method for inspecting the cylinder for gross weight.
  • The actuator pin and pico-cylinder need to work together to provide a reliable and low activation-force system.
  • You need best practices for packaging & integrating the pico-cylinder and actuator into your device.
  • The pico-cylinder needs to work with your device design to ensure that the released gas is sealed and does not leak out of your device before it does its work.

Picocyl has the expertise and experience to meet all of your design needs.

Building Your Devices

Picocyl is the only provider of medical device cylinders in the world. We’ve already impacted the ophthalmology and drug delivery markets, and we’re excited about the opportunity to work with you and your company.

We look forward to the role we’ll play in making lives better for surgeons and patients. Let’s start innovating together.