Making models based on patient data is an obvious application for rapid prototyping technology. Whilst many doctors and surgeons have used this technology successfully, it is by no means a standard for diagnosis or integration with medical procedures. There are numerous reasons for this related to complexity, cost, speed and other performance criteria. This paper will illustrate a number of instances where RP and associated technology has been successfully used for medical applications. These examples will serve to illustrate the diversity of tasks in which RP can benefit the medical community and form the basis for discussion on how medical RP technology should develop.

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This paper reports a study on the modification of a commercial selective laser sintering (SLS) machine for the fabrication of tissue engineering scaffolds from small quantities of poly(L-lactide) (PLLA) microspheres. A miniature build platform was designed, fabricated and installed in the build cylinder of a Sinterstation 2000 system. Porous scaffolds in the form of rectangular prism, 12.7×12.7×25.4 mm3, with interconnected square and round channels were designed using SolidWorks. For initial trials, DuraFormTM polyamide powder was used to build scaffolds with a designed porosity of ~70%. The actual porosity was found to be ~83%, which indicated that the sintered regions were not fully dense. PLLA microspheres in the size range of 5-30 μm were made using an oil-in-water emulsion solvent evaporation procedure and they were suitable for the SLS process. A porous scaffold was sintered from the PLLA microspheres with a laser power of 15W and a part bed temperature of 60oC. SEM examination showed that the PLLA microspheres were partially melted to form the scaffold. This study has demonstrated that it is feasible to build tissue engineering scaffolds from small amounts of biomaterials using a commercial SLS machine with suitable modifications.