Fort Wayne Metals, Ind., manufactures DFT wire (drawn filled tubing), which allows its engineers to match dissimilar materials to provide a variety of properties in a single wire system. Most commonly, the outer sheath of the composite provides strength while the core material serves to provide superelasticity, conductivity, radiopacity, resiliency, or MRI enhancement. Although most Fort Wayne DFT wire is constructed of a core and a single sheath, DFT wire can also be made by combining multiple outer layers if the application requires it.
Niti #1-DFT combines the best of both worlds. The DFT constructions allow the material to maintain the superelastic characteristics of Nitinol when combined with any one of our core materials. By creating a Nitinol composite, engineers have the ability to increase its radiopacity, conductivity, or resiliency depending on the core material chosen. One of the primary benefits of Niti-DFT is that is can be used to achieve enhanced visibility under X-ray fluoroscopy.
The X-Ray image shows the difference between the fill percentages using Platinum as the core material. 1) Solid Nitinol, 2) Niti-DFT®-10%Pt, 3) Niti-DFT®-30%Pt
