A 3D Printed Jaw

This was bound to happen: a person receives a transplant of a major body part made specifically for them by 3D printing technology. 

 

In this case the body part was the lower jaw of an 83 year old woman from Europe, which had become infected and required removal. 3D scanning techniques captured the precise dimensions of the jaw and a replacement was produced using 3D printed powdered titanium.  

 

According to DePers, the process took only a few hours, while alternative methods would have taken days. The new jaw is heavier than a real jaw, being made of titanium, but is said to be quite usable. 

 

We think this is only the tip of a new branch of 3D printing, where all types of body parts, particularly bones, will be 3D printed to matching individual shapes. 

 

The best part of this story? The patient was able to speak and swallow a day after the surgery. 

 

Via DePers (Dutch) (Hat tip to Joe)

Image Credit: Erix!

i.Materialise Glitters with Gold and Silver

3D print service i.Materialise now offers printing in Gold and Silver metals. They're not the first service to offer this ability, but it's wonderful to see another golden service. 

 

Specifics: In addition to the sterling silver, there are three colors of 14 kt gold offered, bright yellow, reddish tinge and white gold available. Prints can be made with up to 0.3mm resolution. The maximum size of these prints is only 88x63x125mm - but if it wasn't limited by size, it would be limited by your pocketbook, as printing in gold and silver is quite expensive. 

 

There's one catch: the i.Materialise print farm doesn't actually print gold and silver directly. Instead, they print a wax model of your design first, and then they use the "lost wax casting" method to produce an actual metal object made of solid gold (or silver). Finally, they finish it off with a lot of hand polishing, which should take out any lines from the 0.3mm resolution printing. 

 

Actually, there are two catches. The second is that the lost wax casting method cannot be used on arbitrary shapes. Any embedded or looped objects just won't work. i.Materialise says, for example, that the "ball within a ball" or "chain links" are forbidden. Polishing also requires the ability to reach all surfaces. A detailed design guide describes all these nuances in detail for designers.  

 

We foresee a great deal of imaginative jewelry appearing now that there are good gold/silver 3D printing options available to designers.   

 

Via i.Materialise

More Metal Printing Experiments

The RepRap team continue to develop methods of printing electrical conductors. If they succeed, it would be possible for future 3D printers to print objects that include (at least at first) simple electronic circuits embedded directly in their shapes. One can imagine a wide variety of LED lamps or switchboxes emerging quickly once this tech is available, for example.

 

But is it available? Rhys Jones described RepRap's recent experiments in a long post detailing the steps they've taken. While the mechanics of 3D printing electronics would be mostly identical to printing in plastic or food, the extruder and material are what's really different. 

 

They've been testing electrically conductive materials with these characteristics: 

 

• Reasonable melting point, similar to the plastic currently used in 3D printers
• Significant viscosity to enable extrusion
• Low surface tension effect to ensure accurate deposition during printing

 

But problems emerged, mainly that their metal extruder (brass) slowly dissolved in the molten metal material and new approaches had to be developed. Eventually they used a hi-temp PTFE nozzle liner and a low-melt point alloy of 57.5% Tin, 41.3% Bismuth, 1.2% Indium that successfully achieved printing the conductive traces above. 

 

This is by no means a ready-to-use technology; They're still working on it, and there is also the question of sourcing this peculiar mix of metals in printable filament. However, this is how all new technology appears, and if it works, we may see it on your desktop sometime in the future. 

 

Via RepRap

3D Printed Curvilinear Antennae

Researchers at the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory at Illinois have achieved something never before accomplished: printing an electronic antenna onto a curved surface. Why would you want to do this? According to electrical and computer engineering professor Jennifer T. Bernhard: 

 

These antennas are electrically small relative to a wavelength (typically a twelfth of a wavelength or less) and exhibit performance metrics that are an order of magnitude better than those realized by monopole antenna designs. 

 

Printing in this way is quite different than the layer-by-layer approach typically used in 3D printing. Instead the print head must scurry along the curved surface so precisely that it doesn't mess up the smooth and uniform deposition of the electrically conductive material. The very short video is quite interesting to watch. 

 

However, this raises an interesting idea: does 3D printing really need to be done layer-by-layer? Or can print heads move up and down as necessary to permit more printable object geometries? Obviously, extremely precise motion is required, but the Illinois team's work demonstrates this is possible. 

 

Via Engineering at Illinois and YouTube

Laser Engineered Net Shaping

Printing metal? There are several ways to do this, mostly involving mixing fine metal powder with a sticky medium, then firing it to fuse the metal together and burn of the sticky stuff. But now we've run across a completely different way to print metal. 

 

Optomec's LENS technology (Laser Engineered Net Shaping) focuses a very high power laser (up to 4kW, ouch!) that fuses metal powder directly as it is deposited. Otherwise the same XYZ platform movements gradually build up the metal object. Will we see this appear inside inexpensive home 3D printers soon? Perhaps not: 

 

The LENS process is housed in a hermetically-sealed chamber which is purged with argon so that the oxygen and moisture levels stay below 10 parts per million. This keeps the part clean, preventing oxidation. The metal powder feedstock is delivered to the deposition head by Optomec's proprietary powder-feed system, which is able to precisely regulate mass flow. Once a single layer has been deposited, the deposition head moves on to the next layer. By building up successive layers, the whole part is constructed. When complete, the component is removed and can be heat-treated, Hot-Isostatic-Pressed, machined, or finished in any customary manner. 

 

Via Optomec

Arcam Electron Beam Melting

We're accustomed to examining home 3D printers or consumer 3D print services, but we're also fascinated by the larger commercial species. An interesting 3D print approach is employed by Arcan, a Swedish manufacturer of Electron Beam Melting printers. Yes, they use "powerful electron beams" (up to 3000W) to melt metal powered to gradually form complete objects layer by layer. 

  

Arcam offers two models, the A1 (for medical implants) and the A2 (for aerospace). The two 1,420Kg (3100 lbw) are very similar, with the A2 offering a unique feature: two interchangeable build chambers, one for tall prints, the other for wide. Four metal powders, various shades of Titanium, and CoCroMo (Cobalt-Chromium-Molybdenum) are suitable: 

 

• Ti6Al4V
• Ti6Al4V ELI
• Titanium Grade 2
• CoCrMo ASTM F75

 

Those are not the kind of thing you'd find in a home 3D printer. Hmm, what kind of noises would a home 3D printer make if it were equipped with 3000W electron beams? 

 

Via Arcam

i.Materialise Metalises

"Clank" is a sound you'll be hearing more often at i.Materialise in the future after this week's announcement of their new Titanium 3D printing process. No kidding - you can now order a Titanium Whistle! 

  

This very advanced process seems unique to i.Materialise, and involves a powder based process. Powedered titanium metal is laid in a very thin layer. An extremely powerful laser then traces the solid portions by melting the powder. A second layer of titanium powder is deployed and the process repeats, gradually building up a whole object. 

 

The strength of titanium is legendary, of course - but this means that the minimum wall thickness can be quite small. In this case, i.Materialise is able to print with a minimum wall thickness of 0.2mm, enabling very fine structures to be printed. 

 

What's not small is the build envelope: 27 x 25 x 43cm (10.6 x 10 x 17 inches). This means some pretty impressive objects can be printed, and we're expecting interesting reports in the next few months. However, you'll have to contrast that against the price, which is somewhat more than printing common plastic. In fact, they say an object within a 2 x 2 x 4 cm box comprised of 4cc's of titanium would cost 235 Euro (USD$313). Pricey - but it IS titanium, after all. A 40cm tall Steve Jobs figurine would probably cost billions. 

 

The price is high not only because of the material. There's the matter of removing support material created when the object is built. Normally, this is a simple matter of dissolving them in a solution or peeling them off if printing in plastic. However, titanium requires somewhat more powerful methods, including "very powerful circular saws and other tools". We're used to removing material with a mere razor blade, not a plasma cutter.

 

If the introduction of titanium wasn't enough, i.Materialise followed up with a post on a new 3D printer capable of printing solid gold. Not satisfied with simply plating objects with gold, the Concept Laser Mlab actually prints gold metal, bit by bit. We suspect the jewellers will eat this one up. If i.Materialise adds this device to their fleet, we suspect they'll attract many amateur and professional jewellers, too. 

 

Via i.Materialise and i.Materialise

Metal and Plastic Materials from EOS

It's press release season at EuroMold, and here we see that laser sintering equipment manufacturer EOS has released some pretty amazing new materials, as you might notice in the image of a laser sintered automobile engine exhaust manifold made in nickel alloy. Here's the new materials:

 

• A flame-retardant polyamide, PrimePart FR, that is especially well-suited for aerospace, which also offers increased economic and ecological benefits.
• A flexible elastomeric material, PrimePart ST, that opens up entire new applications for laser-sintering, such as flexible fasteners, seals, and buffers. This material offers a wide-range of mechanical properties depending on the laser-exposure strategy selected
• A metal nickel alloy with high tensile strength and corrosion resistance that make it ideal for aerospace, chemical, motorsport and marine applications due to its high tensile strength, excellent processability and uniform corrosion resistance

 

You may have thought that laser sintering can produce only plastic models, but that's not true. EOS has been printing metals for some time now (with some 270 metal systems sold thus far), but the new materials take it to another level. According to EOS:

 

Based on these materials, completely new fields of application can be developed, costs can be reduced.

 

This complements EOS's earlier announcement of a new laser sintering system, the EOSINT M 280. It includes a powerful 400 watt laser, capable of melting more metal faster than ever before. This complex device includes sophisticated management systems that ensure quality parts emerge by optimizing gas flows within the 32.5cm chamber.

 

Via EOS