Selective laser sintering of bio-metal scaffold

Abstract

This study presents a fabrication process of bone scaffold model with titanium biomedical materials by rapid prototyping (RP) technique. A RP machine with Nd: YAG laser (120W) was developed to produce bone scaffolds using a selective laser sintering (SLS) technology. The slurry state of biomedical material consists of titanium powder and silica sol mixed at 2g: 1g weight ratio was used in the proposed process. This biomedical titanium slurry was solidified after scanning by a laser beam. The process parameters of laser were tuned at a laser power of 15W, a frequency of 16KHz and a scanning speed of 100mm/s to build the titanium biomedical bone model within 3hrs. Experimental results show that the compressive strength was 142 MPa after post treatment at 900 °C. The mechanical strength of these titanium biomedical material specimens by post sintering process is enhanced. Using this RP machine of layer additive processing, a bone scaffold with complex shape structure can be constructed. Therefore, this process has a greater potential for fabrication bio-metal bone scaffold in tissue engineering. © 2013 The Authors.