More Print out parts for people...

[kayshapero]

I sent Nicolai a link to this article, and he sent me back one to THIS one...

World's first 3D printed customized implant wins innovation award
Dec.15, 2011

Thanks to the innovative 3D printing technology the Maastricht start-up Xilloc Medical has used to create customized implant and won the Shell Livewire Award 2011.

Xilloc Medical B.V. from Maastricht in the Netherlands, is a company manufactures implants that are custom designed for each individual patient using 3D printing technology.

Skull defects repair is a very complex process. Manual forming, sculpting and fixation using standard material for skull defects requires a lot of skills from surgeon. Nevertheless, this long and complex operations often lead to a poor aesthetic result and a number of reconstructive surgery is generally unavoidable to complete the operation. Xilloc Medical was involved in developing a technology using a 3D printer to make patient-specific implants to replace parts of the human skeleton.

The founder of Xilloc Medical, Maikel Beerens, started his thesis project for patient-specific implants in 2006. Together with the Department of Plastic Surgery, Oral Pathology Jaw and Facial Surgery from IDEE, the engineering firm of high-tech medical instruments in Maastricht University, Beerens developed a methodology for designing and manufacturing preoperative patient-specific implants. This was the first time in the world that 3D printing technology is used as the ultimate way to produce patient-specific implants.
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Comments

[ghostwolf.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Every year, "science fiction" becomes real. Even more interesting, this was more or less predicted in the Shadowrun RPG of all places (desktop manufacturing).
All it truly proves is authors and game designers keep up with technology, but it's come much sooner than the year 2070 WizKids predicted.
We nearly have commlinks; the iPhone's close.
You have to wonder what's next. Cyberware?

[kayshapero]

Been around rather longer than Shadowrun, too but yeppers, sometimes we get the Neat Stuff we'd been hoping for and danged quickly too. The Internet, the personal book reader that holds a batch of stuff and fits in your pocket (this has been around since the invention of the PDA), cures for all sorts of Nasty Stuff...