Dr. Mike

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

A member recently messaged me with a question about a brain she printed from this file. I as posting the response here in the hope that it will help others in the community. QUESTION "I came across your 3D printable human brain model and was able to successfully print it. Thank you for sharing it! Now I need to post-process it and am wondering if you can explain how you post-processed your print? I have never done the post-processing before and am not sure the best approach to take. I have attached a picture of our printed brain for your reference. Thank you in advance for insight you can offer!" RESPONSE: Based on the picture you attached, it looks like you used a single extruder printer and printed both the supports and model in the same material, presumably PLA. You need to tear off the supports using pliers. This can be a time-consuming job as getting in every nook and cranny can be difficult. If you find the supports are stuck to much to the model, you may have to adjust some of the settings in your slicer software to compensate. There may be a rough surface where the supports touch the model that you can sand off. If you have a dual extrusion printer, you can print the supports using a water soluble material such as PVA, which makes the supports easy to remove by soaking in water. Dual extruders can be finicky and you will likely have to spend a lot of time trying out different settings to get the supports to work just right, including calibrating the XY offset of the second extruder, determining optimal print temperature for the PLA and support to work together, overhang speed, support infill percentage, etc. This process is very time consuming but gratifying once you get your printer dialed in. If you don't want to deal with the headache, embodi3D has a 3D printing service and can print and ship to you. Hope this helps. Dr. Mike

Interesting. Thanks for sharing.

sadia, Sorry about the slow reply. Do you still require help with this model? Perhaps I can help you. Best, Dr. Mike

Terrie, Speaking of sharing anthropology files online, embodi3D has a dedicated section in the file library for anthropological files. But, it hasn't been active at all. Do you have any ideas for how we can get better sharing in this field? We'd like to help promote 3D printing in anthropology as well as medicine. https://www.embodi3d.com/files/category/11-anthropology/ Thanks in advance, Dr. Mike

Submitted!

OK. What kind of help do you need?

Is this for everyone or just anthropologists?

Piotr, that is brilliant. Thanks for sharing. Are you doing along of 3D Printing-assited bone flaps?

I'm a member of this group and was involved in the drafting if the guidelines. And they are guidelines and subject to change. Really at this moment nobody really know what is or isn't appropriate for a certain indication. The publication is really a summary of where the literature is at the moment and where the is some published research about where 3D printing may be useful. It is a good start.