Manual Braid Inspection Is Slowing You Down More Than You Think

Medical braiding is a critical enabling technology in minimally invasive devices, where flexibility, torque transmission, and kink resistance must be tightly controlled.

Used in applications such as catheters, guidewires, stents, and endoscopic devices, braid construction directly impacts device performance and patient safety.

As a result, braid is treated as a critical-to-quality component, requiring rigorous inspection—most commonly through measuring Picks Per Inch (PPI), the number of crossover points per inch that determines key mechanical properties.

But while the importance of braid inspection is well understood, the way it is performed hasn’t kept pace.

Manual inspection processes (including braid inspection) are still standard across many medical device production lines.

As volumes increase and compliance requirements tighten, it’s becoming harder to maintain speed, consistency, and traceability using manual methods alone.

What used to work at low scale is now starting to impact production throughput, increase reliance on operator judgement, and introduce risk in quality consistency and audit/compliance processes.

Manual inspection doesn’t fail, it stretches.

At first, it’s manageable. Then:

• Inspection begins to fall behind production output
• Results vary depending on operator experience
• Measurement is limited to what can be seen and estimated
• Traceability becomes harder to maintain consistently

And because it’s still “working,” it often isn’t addressed until it becomes a constraint.

In many cases, manual inspection can take 20–40 seconds per part, while still relying on operator judgement—making it difficult to scale without adding labour or introducing variability.

Three things are changing at the same time:

1. Production is speeding up
   Inspection is expected to keep pace with higher throughput.
2. Compliance expectations are increasing
   Traceability, documentation, and audit readiness are no longer optional.
3. Product complexity is rising
   More intricate braiding makes visual inspection alone less reliable.

This combination exposes the limits of manual inspection processes.

This is where automated, data-driven inspection approaches such as Acumen BraidIQ come into play.

Instead of relying on manual checks, inspection becomes embedded within the production workflow delivering:

• Ongoing monitoring during production (not just end-of-line checks)
• Inspection aligned with throughput, without slowing output
• Objective measurement, reducing operator subjectivity
• Full traceability, with images and data captured per part or batch
• Automated reporting, supporting audit readiness without manual effort

The result is not just faster inspection—but a process that is repeatable, scalable, and defensible.

If you’re relying on manual inspection today, the question isn’t whether it works—it’s how long it can keep up.

Download the Acumen BraidIQ two-pager to see a clear, side-by-side comparison and understand what this shift could mean for your production throughput, consistency, and compliance.