3D Printing into the Future.
by Aliza Wajih
3Dprinting is a new evolutionary technology that has recently made its way intothe fields of science, engineering, and medicine. It is being used to do thingsthat can only be described as great successes in modern science and technology.In only the past year, 3D printing was used by NASA to print a spanner in space; it was also used by medical experts to print ekso suits, low-cost prosthetics, robotic arms, and many other similar scientific wonders.
At the University of Melbourne Research Platforms has worked tirelessly to provide and explore this emerging technology for students, researchers and experts. To name some of our involvement with 3D printing thus far, we have worked with the Royal Children’s hospital to print delicate parts of the respiratory system such as bronchea and tracea models for student surgeons and nurses so that they can gain a wealth of experience by practicing surgeries on medical mannequin with body parts of varying sizes.
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We have also worked closely with the graduate students involved in the Melbourne Accelerator Programme and helped them bring conceptual ideas to life. Using our printing facilities, these students created a prototype of their SwatchMate product casing, called “the cube”, which went on to becoming the winner of its category, Product Design – Concept or Prototype!
Last
but not least, last year we successfully printed a titanium heel for a man whose
heel was eaten away by bone cancer. The team that made this happen was led by
Prof Peter Choong at St. Vincent Hospital. Although our printing facilities
were not used to print the heel our “Digital Blacksmith” community was
heavily involved in developing the CAD skills necessary to make this possible.
Due to our success from the stories above, we have established two researcher working groups around the use of 3D printing. The first working group overseas our “mini research grants innovation funding” called “Researcher Product Realisation Working Group”. It overseas 8 mini-grants in a variety of cross-University research topics. The second working group is a medical group that aims to push forward clinical-medical efforts for 3D printing, including pre-opps surgery models for training, new bone implants and bio printing of skin cells and other “growable” materials, like organs.
Throughout the past year Research Platform has hosted numerous events and training sessions which have facilitated interdisciplinary collaboration. It is worth noting that all three of our achievement mentioned above are linked with the massively popular 3D printing showcase which attended by over 1500 people, including the Vice Chancellor who is a big supporter of our community.
Our successful 3D printing drop in sessions on Monday evenings will start from the 9th of March 2015 and will continue to support students and staff from all disciplines wanting to learn more about 3D printing. So much so, that the engineering workshop will become a campus wide facility!
Research Platforms department will also continue providing its software training to upskill next generation digital research. Training will be provided for Autodesk Inventor for mechanical and anatomical modelling, Autodesk 3DCiv and Infra for Architecture and Infrastructure modelling, and 3D Slicer for transforming DICOM models from PETCT and MRI instruments into 3D models for printing.
