Emerging trend in manufacturing of 3D biomedical components using selective laser sintering: A review

Abstract

Additive manufacturing (also known as 3D printing) process is an emerging technique for the fabrication of biomedical components. Selective laser sintering or melting is one of the widely used additive printing technology for manufacturing of metallic and non-metallic components used in the industry. This review paper presents, a summary of the published research papers on the fabrication of biomedical components using selective laser sintering technique. Therefore, author meticulously attempted to investigate individual biocompatible material-wise review which includes Ti6Al4V, Ti-7.5 Mo alloy, β-Ti35Zr28Nb, PEEK, PA2200, and Polyamide/Hydroxyapatite. In addition, this article also explores the effects of the various laser sintering process parameters such as laser power, scanning speed, density of the material on the mechanical properties, tribological properties, porosity and surface roughness of the fabricated alloy. Moreover, the author also investigated challenges and future prospective of the laser processing of biomedical implants.