3D printers are used not only in industry but also in medicine, and their properties allow them to create models of organs for training surgeons, as well as artificial bones used for transplants. However, a Russian student developed a completely new method of their production, which gives the product most similar to the real bone tissue.
Medicine is one area in which 3D printers are gaining in importance. There are projects to use them for the production of personalized pills, which, thanks to the ability to fine-tune the dosage of drugs, will be much more effective than mass-produced medications. They are also used to create realistic models of organs that allow surgeons to dry out on a dry basis, thereby increasing patient safety.
Most often they are used for the production of artificial bones that replace the real ones lost due to an accident or cancer. The use of these devices will soon become even more widespread, as Nikita Toropka, a student at Tomsk University of Technology, has developed an innovative method of using 3D calcium phosphate printing, which makes the finished product almost identical to human bone tissue and can become a cheaper alternative to traditional prostheses. bones.
The use of FDM 3D technology has made the artificial bone fully biocompatible with the body, so there is no risk of rejection. In addition, it is biodegradable and, despite the porous surface, extremely durable.
Our 70 percent bones are composed of calcium phosphate, so that the prostheses have been approved by the body, and must also contain its components. The idea of their use is not new, but the innovation of the method invented by Toropek is not so much to choose the quantity of the component as on the method of printing.
Previous methods have used SLS 3D technology and although it allows for precise printing of porous objects, their strength is not even close to the strength of human bone. However, the student has managed to develop a method that produces bone density and almost identical strength as human bone tissue.