Tremendous advance in affordable prosthetics announced by Fripp Design and Research this past week: 3D-printing “can produce up to 150 prosthetic eyes per hour.” From Dezeen::
Fripp Design and Research, which is also working on 3D-printed ears and noses for patients with facial disfigurements, has collaborated with Manchester Metropolitan University to develop ocular prosthetics that are 3D-printed in batches, with intricate coloured details including the iris and blood vessels already included.
Currently, prosthetic eyes are moulded in acrylic and painted by hand to match the patient’s eye colour. This process is time-consuming and expensive, whereas producing the eyes using a 3D printer enables up to 150 eyes to be made in an hour.
“To hand-make a prosthetic eye takes between four and eight hours depending on the individual painting the eye,” the company’s founder Tom Fripp told Dezeen. “Because only one eye can be done at a time, the waiting time in the UK for an eye is approximately ten weeks. With our system we can 3D print up to 150 in one hour and post process approximately five per hour, each one different.”
All of the components are printed from powder in full colour using a Z-Corp 510 machine before the resulting form is encased in resin. Compared to the existing handmade production method, this helps to remove any variation in quality and significantly reduces the cost of each eye, which is currently up to £3000 in the UK.
“Because each one is produced from the same system the consistency is the same and the cost is drastically reduced to approximately £100,” said Fripp.
By printing eyes in batches, each with a slightly different hue, Fripp pointed out that it is possible to accurately match the look of the prosthesis to the patient’s existing eye: “Although we have not perfected colour matching yet, because we can print so many in such a short space of time the colour change between each one is so slight that the chances of getting a good match is very good.”
Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!
Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!
The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!
