News and Insights of 3D Printing and Manufacturing
We often talk about the potential of additive manufacturing to revolutionize the medical industry through implants, but there is one healthcare area where 3D printed implants are already having very real impacts: in the veterinary field.
3D Systems revealed this week that it has been working closely with nonprofit organization OpHeart over the past four years to provide 3D printed tools and devices to pediatric heart surgeons to help with surgical preparation. OpHeart is a U.S.-based organization dedicated to improving treatments for children born with life-threatening heart defects.
Belgian chemical company Solvay introduced three new medical grade additive manufacturing materials for the healthcare industry at Formnext last week. The new materials, KetaSpire PEEK (NT1 HC), KetaSpire PEEK (CF10 HC) and Radel PPSU (NT1 HC), are Solvay’s first high-performance filaments for medical use.
Yissum, a technology transfer company affiliated with the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel, has developed a new 3D printing technique for producing drug capsules. The process, to be presented at the annual 3D Printing and Beyond conference today at the Hebrew University, utilizes custom 3D printed hydrogels with the capacity for delayed release for controlled drug dosage.
Stem cell research firm Celprogen Inc. has been working on something quite exciting for some time now, which has remained largely under the radar until very recently. The California-based company announced it has successfully 3D printed a human brain organelle using brain stem cells. The bioprinted brain could have applications in studying neurological diseases.
French 4D bioprinting company Poietis has announced the commercialization of its Next Generation Bioprinting (NGB) systems. The bioprinting platform, which has been in development for the past four years, is designed for tissue engineering applications in research and development or for clinical batch production.
The CRIQ (also known as the “Centre de recherche industrielle du Québec”) is a research organization run by the Quebec government in Canada which undertakes over a thousand projects a year to push forward industrial innovation. In recent years, one of these projects has revolved around the adoption of additive manufacturing technologies for the development and production of next-gen implants and, specifically, lower jawbone implants.
In a time where connected devices and IoT are becoming increasingly mainstream, the idea of an object that tracks information is not wholly surprising. If, however, I told you that the object tracking the information did not integrate any electronics or batteries, I’d certainly expect some quizzical looks. But that’s exactly what researchers from the University of Washington have achieved in a recent research project involving 3D printed objects that can monitor how they are used.
A bioengineering PhD candidate from the University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering has been developing a 3D printed phantom head which so closely resembles a human head that it can be used to test the 7 Tesla magnetic resonance imager (7T MRI), one of the strongest clinical MRI devices in use.
Endocon GmbH, a German medical device company, has turned to additive manufacturing to improve hip and knee replacement surgeries. The company utilized metal AM technologies from GE Additive to create the endoCupcut, an innovative medical device that makes hip cup extraction easier, more cost effective and more reliable.