Biomedical Applications of Additive Manufacturing

Abstract

Additive manufacturing (AM) is a comparatively new, widely growing manufacturing method on which a lot of research work has been carried out and it is still a booming field that has multiple applications in industrial, medical, military, automobile, aircraft industries, and in many more areas. This review is regarding the use of additive manufacturing for biomedical applications. This review presents how additive manufacturing has brought a revolution in medical applications, by building customized implants of different body parts as per customer-specific requirements, building prosthetics, and other medical devices as well. Additive manufacturing is rapidly being used because of its ability to bring about innovation in manufacturing extremely complex parts easily by building parts layer by layer; thus, giving it the flexibility to manufacture distinct or difficult parts, which are otherwise difficult to machine by traditional subtractive manufacturing. This article highlights the use of 3D printing in dentistry, wherein by using the 3D scanner, a CAD model of patient’s dentures is generated which is studied upon and then manufactured by additive manufacturing for research or generating artificial customized dentures for the patients. The use of 3D-printed prosthetics, virtual surgical planning wherein by using CAD data, the vital body organs are 3D printed in a 1:1 scale for the surgeons to perform virtual surgery on the 3D-printed organ before actually operating upon the patients. Thus, 3D printing is proving a boon, as it is bringing innovation, ease, and safety for medical applications. The other applications such as 3D-printed-customized medical devices and bio-printing of living tissues and cells are also presented in this article.