In the News
New effort in GR for 3D printing for medical devices
January 17, 2019
More than a dozen students from Grand Valley State University’s Padnos College of Engineering and Computing will join the GVSU Applied Medical Device Institute and the Grand Rapids medical device contract designer and manufacturer MediSurge Products LLC in the effort, which will use 3D printing technology from Redwood City, Calif.-based Carbon Inc.
Carbon 3D printer technology has been installed in AMDI’s incubator space in Grand Valley’s Cook-DeVos Center for Health Sciences. Grand Valley officials say the installation is the first in the midwest to use Carbon 3D printing on campus. Said Brian Nowak, executive director of AMDI: “This novel 3D additive manufacturing technology, targeting medical grade materials, will soon be the new standard, and this study will be a launch pad for course content that is used in curriculum throughout the university.”
Carbon’s technology offers nine different families of materials that are biocompatible, meaning they are not toxic or harmful to living tissue and can be used in or under the skin. While the use of 3D printing technology has been used by many different industries, it has never been an option for final polymer-material-based medical device manufacturing, as existing materials are not safe for intravenous use and printed polymer products could only be used as prototypes.
“Our team was very interested in being a part of this project, as there is a unique dynamic between all three entities,” said Andy Savarese, medical technology sales manager at Carbon, Inc. “This study also provides a platform to teach the engineers of tomorrow different ways to manufacture products, and that is very important to our team at Carbon.”
The costs and time to market for polymer-based medical devices are growing rapidly with increased regulations, steel tooling, and design validation requirements. The goal of this program is to find the tipping point, in complexity and number of parts, where 3D printing technology will be the method of choice to significantly reduce startup costs and time to market, a benefit for companies of all sizes. Continue Reading