One of the largest business sectors that attracts metal 3D printing is the orthopedics and implants division of surgical medicine. Betatype, a London-based additive manufacturing company, recently released a case study that looked at the productivity gains achieved by the plastic surgery office using Betatype's AM workflow.
Betatype uses a Laser Powder Bed Fusion (PBF) 3D printer, which is capable of generating solid and porous geometries in the same part. A mesh structure is necessary to simulate the strength, flexibility, and texture of bones, but generating and processing those extremely complex geometries is computationally intensive. In fact, Betatype has developed its own data processing technology called Engine. The engine has the processing power equivalent to 640 virtual computers, with nearly 5TB of RAM, allowing it to generate build files as large as 148 gigabytes. In addition, their algorithm can reduce the file size of complex geometries by up to 96%; in the nTopology LTCX format, the 235 megabyte spine STL model is only 8 megabytes.
On the hardware side, using a galvanometer-driven path optimization and improved laser trigger driver, Betatype can reduce build time by 40%. Combining as many parts as possible into a single print is another way for their system to improve efficiency, so a grid-stacked structure was implemented in their document preparation kit. Using this method, more than 800 posterior lumbar cages can be 3D printed at one time, greatly reducing production time and costs.
Betatype also shows how metal 3D printing and supercomputing can continuously produce orthopedic implants that mimic bone porosity.