ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING
Additive manufacturing is now reasonably well established in dentistry
different parameters to get their heads around.’ Littlewood continued: ‘Tat’s why we optimise
a customer’s machine to give certain build attributes that are required for the medical product they are building when we install it. Tis helps to reduce the learning curve and get them producing products sooner.’ Tis issue is further exacerbated by unfamiliar
pre- and post-production processes, according to Littlewood, who added: ‘None of these are particularly complex or prohibitive, many are analogous to processes for subtractive manufacturing, but they are just not widely understood.’ Renishaw has developed several intuitive
soſtware tools that automate and streamline many activities. Te first is Adept, which is a clinician-focused design package that can be used by healthcare professionals who have little or no CAD experience to design maxillofacial implants. Currently designs require complex design packages that can take hours of a skilled
technician’s time. Adept can reduce this time to less than 15 minutes. Te second package is QuantAM and its
dental-optimised version, QuantAM Dental. Tey enable quick and easy preparation of parts for building. Te dental version goes a little further and automatically heals the CAD file, orientates the part, places ID tags, creates supports and nests with similar device types. ‘Along the entire journey we focus on ease of use, while maintaining flexibility and quality,’ Littlewood added.
now significantly easier and more cost effective. ‘Serial production of implants also gains from
Facial reconstruction Additive manufacturing is regularly used to create personalised implants because of the flexibility of the production process. Littlewood explained: ‘It’s now as simple to produce a batch of custom implants as it is to serially produce a batch of one design. Tis means that custom implant production is
simple to produce a batch of custom implants as it is to serially produce a batch of one design
It’s now as
the ability to integrate complex lattice structures into a design. Tis can aid weight and material savings, and enable implants to mimic the stiffness of bone or to potentially improve osteo-integration,’ Littlewood added. Additive manufacturing is used
regularly during complex facial and cranial surgery to create both the custom implantable plates and the surgical guides to aid such procedures. In one example, surgical guides were printed for a patient suffering from a bone disorder in which scar-like tissue develops in
place of normal bone, which severely disfigured the cranium and orbital bone surrounding the leſt eye. 3D Systems printed a model using its ProX
stereolithography technology that showed what the patient’s skull would look like once extraneous bone was removed. Stereolithography (SL) is the process by which a 3D printing machine, called a stereolithograph apparatus (SLA), converts liquid plastic into solid objects using a UV laser. Two surgical guide templates were also
created; one helped the surgeon position a temporary patient-specific titanium mesh to protect the patient’s eye socket region, and the other represented the bony overgrowth that needed to be removed from the patient’s skull. Kevin McAlea, executive vice-president and
A titanium spinal cage implant
www.lasersystemseurope.com | @lasersystemsmag
chief operating officer of healthcare at 3D Systems, said: ‘Such templates are used to guide
ISSUE 38 • SPRING 2018 LASER SYSTEMS EUROPE 11
3D Systems
Renishaw
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