Dr. Mike

I've never heard of this. It almost sounds too good to be true. Anybody have experience with this?

I think you can use 3D slicer. Here is a forum discussion on the topic. https://discourse.slicer.org/t/open-tiff-files/1494

You are very welcome. We really try to listen to all member feedback, and appreciate it when people take the time to let us know about a problem. Thank you.

Agreed. This limit was put in place to prevent abuse for free downloads, but should not apply to paid items. We are working on a fix. You should now be able to download your files. Thank you for letting us know about this issue.

You can use a variety of free tools, including Blender or Meshmixer. Meshmixer is probably easiest. Here is the function shown in this picture.

Kopachini is correct. You need to close the open hole.

We recently 3D printed a multimaterial skull with MCA aneurysm from a CTA head for customer who needed the skull in rigid plastic and the vessels and aneurysm in flexible material. The model will be used by neurosurgeons to practice intracranial aneurysm clipping surgery. To properly simulate the surgery, the skull needs to be hard and the vessels elastic. Combining two materials (and two printers!) provides the best solution. The model was created on democratiz3D. You can learn more about embodi3D's printing service here.

You might want to check the spine and pelvis download area. https://www.embodi3d.com/files/category/13-spine-and-pelvis/

Thanks for sharing the link Josip. Nice work!

There is a Medical 3D printing conference in Germany this May. Materialise has a conference in Belgium this June. There is a smaller conference run in Basel Switzerland. Here is the link from last year (none available this year yet) I am still looking for North American conferences. Will post if I find any.

No, unfortunately it was cancelled for this year. I think the 3D printing conferences and workshops are going to organized by the RSNA 3D Printing Special Interest Group going forward, but I am not sure if they have determined an exact time and place yet. I highly encourage you to attend these conferences. They are highly informative and all the major groups doing medical 3D printing work (Mayo, Ottawa, Walter Reed, Stanford, VA, etc) will be attending and probably so will I! I will inquire with the RSNA 3D Printing SIG about the schedule of upcoming meetings and post a response here. Dr. Mike

You need volumetric (3D) data, not 2D angiographic data. Unless you have a CT or MRI, angios wont work. You could potentially do a cone-beam CTA in the angio suite if you have the right software though. kopachini, thanks for helping out this member with your response. Dr. Mike

I have extensively used the Form 2 as well as the Ultimaker 3E and other FDM printers. My review of the UM3E is below. In short, neither works well for the complex geometries in medical and anatomic models. The build volume for the Form 2 is a major issue unless you are only doing small parts like dental. Also, cleanup is a pain with support removal, resin cleaning and post curing. You will also run into problems like being able to remove the part from the build platform. Because the part is attached so tightly, often a spatula doesn't work nor does the Formlabs part removal tool. I cut an artery in my finger once and sprayed blood all over the wall because a razor blade is often the only tool that can separate the part from the platform. You will need to wear gloves for everything, and I know of at least two people who have developed skin allergies to the resin. The UM3E advertises a large build volume for anatomic parts, but in my extensive testing I ran into about an 80% failure rate. You can see my full review of the Ultimaker 3E at the link below. I encountered all kinds of failures, especially with large parts, and I don't think the larger and more expensive S5 really addresses any of these issues except maybe having a filament detector. Really the only way I have found to reliable print anatomic part is to build highly customized printers and software. It took about a year of intense trial and error to get everything right. I took a really deep dive, including reprogramming firmware in Chinese (which I don't speak). If you are willing to go this route, I encourage and applaud you. FYI, if you have medical or anatomic prints and want to save yourself the headache, embodi3D has recently launched a medical 3D printing service that will print and ship to you. It is an alternative to consider. With regard to cost I think FDM is clearly less expensive. Formlabs was revolutionary when their first printer came out, but the FDM space has much more innovation with open architecture. It kind of reminds me of Apple vs PCs in the 1980s - well engineered but closed architecture vs cheaper open architecture. Hope this helps and thanks for being an embodi3D member! Dr. Mike