3d Printing Case Study

Opportunities to Supply Materials Into the 3D-Printed Medical/Dental Market.

There are considerable opportunities as well in the supply of materials to the 3D dental and medical industry. The most popular metal materials are cobalt chrome and titanium. These metals possess biological inertness and can carry high strength-to-weight proportions. Almost each and every 3D print manufacturer has developed its own version of these materials, each slightly modified to work better with their machines. The very nature of these materials makes processing them into usable power, which is then processed into the product via the 3D printer, makes these materials an expensive raw resource. The average cost per kilogram of these metals in powder form can run anywhere from $800-$1000USD.

Plastics however are much cheaper, although most are not biologically inert, nor common in this industry at the moment for internal implants or bio-replacement. Photosensitive resins are mostly used for short-term modelling and dental products, such as temporaries and partial dental framing. There are polyamide-based powders that can be utilised as models and medical apparatus’ or tools and then there are the new high performance PEKK materials, which have both biological inertness and high strength-to-weight ratio’s which are being used for implants

Although order quantities (based on feedback from manufacturers) are relatively low for most medical and dental needs, order quantities will and must increase over the next decade to facilitate the growing market of medical and dental 3D print manufacturing. Forecasts for the materials market for medical and dental will be worth $297USD million by 2018 and will exceed $1.1USD billion by 2023 according to industry reports (insert citation from module notes on draft