3D / additive manufacturing news

A $500,000 grant from the Grand Rapids SmartZone Local Development Finance Authority will fund a 2.5 year collaboration to address cost and time barriers for medical device innovations. Grand Valley State University, the applied Medical Device Institute (aMDI), and MediSurge, will use Carbon Inc. 3D printing technology to create production-grade parts using medical-grade materials and tolerances to accelerate device development and component manufacturing cycles.

More than a dozen undergraduate and graduate students from Grand Valley’s Seymour and Esther Padnos College of Engineering and Computing, along with faculty, will be joining the aMDI team through applied research opportunities.

Costs and time to market for polymer-based medical devices are growing rapidly with increased regulations, steel tooling, and design validation requirements. The AM program’s goal is to find the tipping point, in complexity and number of parts, where 3D printing technology will be the preferred method to reduce startup costs and time to market.

Upon completion of the study and determination of scalability, MediSurge hopes to be the first medical device manufacturing company in the Midwest to offer this service

3D printing lab for customized orthopedic implants

Since 2016, New York’s Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) has sourced patient-specific custom implants from Italy-based LimaCorporate. By 2020, a new provider-based additive manufacturing (AM) 3D printing facility, operated by Lima, will leverage its advanced technology with HSS’ expertise in clinical care and biomechanical engineering to accelerate innovation in complex orthopedic joint care.

Patients will be able to get scanned on-site for custom implant creation in the lab.

Lima will be the registered manufacturer for all devices designed and produced at the facility located at HSS. The facility will initially serve hospitals in the region before making the devices available to all providers in the U.S.