Additive Manufacturing (AM) has rapidly become an important technology in both research and industry. This development has allowed the evolution of 3D printers which are able to print complex geometries at low costs and faster than traditional methods. Despite this, most of these printers are either only for using one material or one technology. This limits a lot its use in different sectors such as aeronautics, automotive or health, because multi-material prototypes are needed. For example, surgeons need surgical planning prototypes for preoperative planning. These 3D printed prototypes have mainly been manufactured using just one technology. As a result, the prototypes have some main limitations: (1) do not actually mimic the anatomical structures of the human body, (2) high costs specially for Material Jetting and Powder Bed Fusion AM technologies. Therefore, the aim of present manuscript is the design, development, and commissioning of a hybrid multi-material 3D printer.
Surgical planning is a preoperative method of pre-visualization that is carried out before or during a surgical intervention in order to achieve the best outcome. This can be done either image-based or hands-on. Regarding the first strategy, it is based on the use of medical images. However, it has a huge limitation, which is the difficulty of identifying anatomical structures (crucial for surgeons to make correct decisions) and distances between tissues without any physical support. This problem is overcome with the use of 3D models. Despite this important development, until nowadays most of the surgical planning prototypes were 3D printed either using the moulding technique, which might take several days, or high-cost technologies as is material jetting. That is why, the present manuscript seeks to solve the problems arose by the use of a hybrid-multi material 3D printer which can not only use several materials at the time, but also two 3D printing technologies. The prototype introduced in this study is a neuroblastoma, a common cancer among children.
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