>> right now i'm standingin front of a 3d printer. this particular printer has aselective laser-sintering machine, which is a rapid prototyping machine that weuse to build custom implants for clinical use and also for research use in our lab. what's going on inside the machineis a layer of polycaprolactone,
university of michigan 3d printing, which is a biodegradable polymer isgetting deposited on a building platform. and a laser is then passing over thatin a 2d pattern to melt the powder, and it's building up the tracheal splintlayer by layer in the z direction. you can see the faint shadowsof the 2d cross sections
of the tracheal splint on the build platform. and in a few moments you'll see thoseareas start to darken as the laser traces out its 2d path outlining the cross sectionof the next layer on the build platform. one of the splint designsis 23 millimeters in length. in order to populate theplatform with about 30 copies of that splint it takes roughlythree and a half hours to build. and it's 288 layers. so our 3d printing of thetracheal splint build is done. and i am going to open up the machine.
opening the door. and now i am carrying the buildplatform out of the machine. now i'm putting the buildplatform into our sieve, which will help us separate theparts from the un-sintered powder. this is a hydraulic platformthat's raising the platform up. you can see the non-sintered powderon top, which we will push off. so now i am just using some forceps to take someof these splint designs out of the powder bed. and you can see that thenon-sintered powder is loose. and it comes off relatively easily.
so we will remove all of thesesplints, separate them from the powder, and then the next step will be to use anair blasting cabinet to get the remainder of the powder off of these implants. ok. so now what i'm doing is i'm just usingan air blasting gun and removing the powder. and the longer splint is designed togo over the region on the left bronchus
that is collapsing when the patient exhales. and the smaller splint isdesigned to go on to the area on the right bronchus that's collapsing. [ silence ]
