Teenager can walk again thanks to Dutch 3D printed spinal implant
1–10 of 35 posts
Re: Teenager can walk again thanks to Dutch 3D printed spinal implant
#2Question : Why did the patients ASIA assessment improve?
Was their impairment caused by temporary nerve impingement that was alleviated once the mechanical burden of the spinal collapse was taken care of?
Neat tech.
Re: Teenager can walk again thanks to Dutch 3D printed spinal implant
#3This is pretty awesome. And sure, right now it's limited to high end tech at the bleeding edge of medicine, but I fully hope this will inspire the current gen owners of glowforges, makerbots, xcarves, and all of their off-brand alternatives to begin making over-engineered, novel, and interesting finger splints or Band-Aids or other diy-friendly med tech.
Re: Teenager can walk again thanks to Dutch 3D printed spinal implant
#4This is pretty awesome. And sure, right now it's limited to high end tech at the bleeding edge of medicine, but I fully hope this will inspire the current gen owners of glowforges, makerbots, xcarves, and all of their off-brand alternatives to begin making over-engineered, novel, and interesting finger splints or Band-Aids or other diy-friendly med tech.
Worth noting then that many already have been inspired :)
http://www.openhandproject.org https://3dprint.nih.gov/collections/prosthetics
Re: Teenager can walk again thanks to Dutch 3D printed spinal implant
#5This is pretty awesome. And sure, right now it's limited to high end tech at the bleeding edge of medicine, but I fully hope this will inspire the current gen owners of glowforges, makerbots, xcarves, and all of their off-brand alternatives to begin making over-engineered, novel, and interesting finger splints or Band-Aids or other diy-friendly med tech.
I have a friend whose son was born with a partial hand. They were able to use 3D printing to make a prosthetic that was cheap enough they could make new ones as he grew. IIRC, they could do themes such as iron man for the prosthetic.
Re: Teenager can walk again thanks to Dutch 3D printed spinal implant
#6How durable are things like this? I know virtually nothing about 3D printing. How tough can items be made?
Re: Teenager can walk again thanks to Dutch 3D printed spinal implant
#7This is pretty awesome. And sure, right now it's limited to high end tech at the bleeding edge of medicine, but I fully hope this will inspire the current gen owners of glowforges, makerbots, xcarves, and all of their off-brand alternatives to begin making over-engineered, novel, and interesting finger splints or Band-Aids or other diy-friendly med tech.
[deleted]
Re: Teenager can walk again thanks to Dutch 3D printed spinal implant
#8How durable are things like this? I know virtually nothing about 3D printing. How tough can items be made?
The article says it’s titanium
This is just “manufacturing” which has little resemblance to the consumer makerbot products
Re: Teenager can walk again thanks to Dutch 3D printed spinal implant
#9How durable are things like this? I know virtually nothing about 3D printing. How tough can items be made?
3D printing metal is usually done by sintering a metal powder. The technology is good enough for turbine blades in aircraft engines.
Re: Teenager can walk again thanks to Dutch 3D printed spinal implant
#10How durable are things like this? I know virtually nothing about 3D printing. How tough can items be made?
It's made of titanium (though almost certainly some alloy) so they probably used a DMLS (direct metal laser sintering), SLM (selective laser melting) or DMLM (direct metal laser melting) process. All will result in fairly strong material structure. Probably not as strong as tempering/quenching would make it though. Either way, this is not something you can do with a hobby 3D printer :-)