Forceps for plastic surgery
TC instruments. A success story.
Wherever the surgeon in OP needs to grip another instrument with the pincette, the issue known as material pairing comes into play. In such cases, a harder material is incorporated in the tip of an instrument, most commonly chrome-tungsten-carbide alloy, also known simply as tungsten carbide, which gives rise to the name, ‘TC instruments’.
It is only this carbide insert that makes it possible to grip a needle or a hook with the pincette, without wearing the tip of the gripping instrument. TC instruments therefore provide effective protection against abrasive wear. TC instruments are used in various fields, including plastic surgery.
This might sound simple enough, but it translates into a real challenge for the manufacturer. Classically, the carbide insert is soldered into each TC instrument. Trade jargon refers to this as ‘hard-soldering’. At Sprenger, we have become masters of this art form. After many years of testing, our team has succeeded in perfecting a way of linking the normal hardening process – the standard way of manufacturing every instrument – with the hard-soldering process.
Since things can sometimes seem to work without anyone really knowing why, Sprenger has written up this process very precisely in a graduate dissertation. Which gives the success story of TC instruments a happy ending: Wherever the tip of an instrument needs to be harder than what it is gripping, Sprenger can now call upon a validated and unique process. This is why TC instruments are a corporate speciality of Sprenger.