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.
In recent years, extrusion 3D printing processes have undergone an important development. They allow obtaining complex shapes in an easy way and relatively low cost. Different plastic materials can be 3D printed with the fused filament fabrication (FFF) technology. Bioinert ceramics such as alumina or zirconia have excellent physical and mechanical properties (high melting point, high strength…) that make them appropriate in different fields: medicine, electronics, etc. However, 3D printing of ceramics is by far less developed than 3D printing of plastics or metals. A possible application for 3D printing of ceramics is the manufacture of prostheses, which usually have complex shapes with porous structures. Ceramic prostheses have several advantages over the use of other materials: they generate low debris, they are hard and they are inert and corrosion-resistant. In the present work the recent advances about extrusion 3D printing of ceramic materials are presented, with a special focus on the manufacture of prostheses.
3D printing or Additive Manufacturing (AM) was originally born as a mono-material technology. And, nowadays, most of the applications are still using only one material. AM has a lot of potential but has not yet been fully explored, and access to the creation of multi-material products is an example of it. One of the most interesting areas is the introduction in the same part of materials with different rigidities, stiffer and softer areas, with differentiated values of mechanical strength and viscoelasticity. In the present work, a general vision of Additive Manufacturing under the vision of mono- and multi-material processes is given, and some existing 3D printing multi-material experiences related to Material Jetting (MJ) and Material Extrusion (ME) are briefly described. But it is in this latter field, linked to Desktop 3D printing (more accessible than typical proprietary industrial equipment), where on-going research could easily be spread: five research ME concepts are then presented, from a revolver print-head to silicone UV 3D printing, with their initial embodiment in the form of prototypes or/and testing, as a way to verify the difficulties that would be encountered in the transition from research to reality.
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