
Cancer patient gets a 3D-printed titanium rib cage - Pamar
http://csironewsblog.com/2015/09/11/cancer-patient-receives-3d-printed-ribs-in-world-first-surgery/
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arm55
This is one of those situations in which incremental improvements in
technology add up enough that they enable some pretty amazing applications.
Very cool.

Aside from the 3d printing, this is possible largely because of huge
advancements in immune-inert implantable materials and anti-biofouling
coatings. I think we're ready to see this sort of thing become the norm very
very quickly.

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eru
Material science is behind lots of advances in the `cooler' technologies. (And
better numerics are behind lots of advances in the `cooler' parts of
computing.)

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rch
Lately it seems like I've run into a lot people interested in the so-called
materials genome:

[https://www.whitehouse.gov/mgi](https://www.whitehouse.gov/mgi)

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rch
I'm curious why they needed to use additive manufacturing instead of machining
and joining the parts.

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toomuchtodo
Additive manufacturing allows for better bonding then machining and joining
the parts. Its essentially molecular welding, depending on whether you're
doing SLS (sintering) or SLM (melting).

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Mithaldu
I don't understand though why the rib replacements are so thin. it seems
dangerous to have a lot of soft tissue around such thin and hard metal bars.

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DasIch
I would assume that titanium has a higher density than bone and rib bones
aren't that large to begin with. Making them larger and thereby heavier would
probably cause a few problems.

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cornewut
You could make the titanium parts hollow. That would solve the density
problem.

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akiselev
3d printing with metals allows for much more complicated geometries but it's
not magic, there are still significant limitations, doubly so when you're
talking about implants.

For example, there would have to be perforations for extracting the raw
material from inside the hollow interior (probably titanium powder in this
case) which means that you now have a hard to post process implant (titanium
isn't exactly bioinert) with an exponentially greater surface area for
possible autoimmune reactions or infections and an interior that is probably
damn near impossible to sterilize (since you'd probably honeycomb the walls).

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Justin10s
Question directed to people in the 3D printing scene: What undiscovered uses
for 3D printing do you think can really help?

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bitwize
"That's so cool. I look like freakin' Wolverine!" \--Dave Lizewski, _Kick-Ass_

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dang
Url changed from [http://www.engadget.com/2015/09/11/spanish-cancer-patient-
ge...](http://www.engadget.com/2015/09/11/spanish-cancer-patient-
gets-a-3d-printed-titanium-rib-cage/), which points to a gizmodo.com article
which points to this.

