Artificial bone grafting is widely used in current orthopedic surgery for bone defect problems. Unfortunately, surgeons remain unsatisfied with the current commercially available products. One of the major complaints is that these products cannot provide sufficient mechanical strength to support the human skeletal structure. In this study, we aimed to develop a bone scaffold with better mechanical property and good cell affinity by 3D printing (3DP) techniques. A self-developed 3D printer with laser-aided gelling (LAG) process was used to fabricate bioceramic scaffolds with inter-porous structures. To improve the mechanical property of the bioceramic parts after heating, CaCO3 was added to the silica ceramic slurry. CaCO3 was blended into a homogenous SiO2-sol dispersion at weight ratios varying from 0/100 to 5/95 to 9/91 (w/w). Bi-component CaCO3/SiO2-sol was prepared as a biocomposite for the 3DP scaffold. The well-mixed biocomposite was used to fabricate the bioceramic green part using the LAG method. The varied scaffolds were sintered at different temperatures ranging from 900 to 1500°C, and the mechanical property was subsequently analyzed. The scaffolds showed good property with the composite ratio of 5:95 CaCO3:SiO2 at a sintering temperature of 1300°C. The compressive strength was 47 MPa, and the porosity was 34%. The topography of the sintered 3DP bioceramic scaffold was examined by SEM, EDS and XRD. The silica bioceramic presented no cytotoxicity and good MG-63 osteoblast-like cell affinity, demonstrating good biocompatibility. Therefore, the new silica biocomposite is viable for fabricating 3DP bone bioceramics with improved mechanical property and good cell affinity.
This research developed a feedback control system of laser compensation for the rapid prototyping (RP) machine using layer-wise slurry deposition and selective laser sintering (SLS). The slurry was prepared by silica power and silica sol with 60 and 40 wt.% with suitable rheological properties for 0.1 mm layer deposition. Four ceramics for comparison of the formability of fabricated ceramic green parts with/without the feedback control system of laser energy density for models were designed With this laser feedback control, batter quality ceramic green parts can be manufactured and the rapid prototyping machine with steady laser energy radiated on slurry layer was achieved. Experimental results validate the well performance of the measuring laser power and feedback control system.
This article proposes a rapid prototyping apparatus of selective laser sintering for
forming silica ceramic green parts. The main differences between the proposed and other RP
processes for forming ceramic part are the slurry material used to obtain fine layer thickness and
the capability of constructing support structure to increase the dimensional accuracy of the
workpiece having an overhang. The RP apparatus developed by us comprises a laser scanning
system, a material paving system, and a computer control system. A CO2 laser is adopted to scan
over a mixture made of a silica sol and silica powder. The silica sol acts as a binder to gel the silica
powder together, which forms a 3D object using laser gelation method. A series of experiments
were carried out to obtain the optimal process parameters. An SEM is employed to analyze the
microstructure of the ceramic part. It has been found that the smallest layer is of 100 μm thick. The
results show that both the accuracy of the material paving mechanism and the optimal process
parameters can fulfill the requirements of the RP processes.
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