Foreseeing new multi-material FFF-Additive Manufacturing concepts meeting mimicking requirements with living tissues

Abstract

The development of additive manufacturing (AM) during the last years has revolutionized not only the industry, but also the medical sector. This alongside the necessity in our society and in medicine to enhance the quality of life of the population has led to the creation of surgical training prototypes. They are used during surgery’s planification phase before carrying out an operation. Surgical training is a good method for medical teams to visualize and have an idea of what they can encounter in the interventions. In order to meet this objective, these prototypes should mimic as much as possible the corresponding living tissues. To achieve that, different parameters are taken into consideration: viscosity, elastic modulus, shore, etc. Nonetheless, it is difficult to achieve that aim, since until now only mono-material prototypes are accessible to hospitals due to the high cost of multi-material prototypes made with industrial proprietary AM equipment. Therefore, a deep study is done in the different multi-materials concepts within an open – and thus accessible – technology: Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) 3D printers. Finally, a desktop multi-material AM open concept based on multiple independent extruders for surgical training prototypes is described.