When I was young I broke my arm, as many do at that age; I immediately got the plaster cast wet at a birthday party, as many do at that age. I had to take ANOTHER trip to the doctor for a new cast to be set costing time, money, and wear and tear on my parents. Diana Hall created the company ActiveArmor to supply activity approved 3D printed casts.

Profile from Joan Horvath on Make:

To create each custom cast, first a scan is made of the patient’s injured body part, using ActivArmor’s phone app. Then the device is created by an ActivArmor provider using the company’s proprietary software, which has been a crucial invention. The cast can be locked on, or not, depending on whether the patient is allowed to remove it.

The material has to be not just biocompatible but also non-porous, so that customers can bathe, swim, and live fairly normally, versus a traditional cast that can’t get wet. To accomplish that, the casts need to be post-processed to remove layer lines. If you’re a 3D printing person, you know that the conditions in the room and even the batch of filament can affect the outcome, so ActivArmor and its providers need to manage those variables. And there are more issues in the case of a cast, such as transparency to X-rays.

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