Design and Quality Assured Manufacturing of Free Form Metal Prostheses by Selective Laser Melting Technology

Abstract

This paper concerns the key steps in the design, manufacturing and certification of customized acetabular cups. The process is based on the compilation of computed tomography scans to create a surface that is generated from the point cloud of the surface model. As a result, the surface model is obtained. The final step is the manufacturing itself. The features of Selective Laser Melting, also referred to as Direct Metal Laser Sintering in the literature, the placement of workpieces in the construction space and peculiarities of the support design are described. Important technological preparations of the EOS M 100 3D camera for the manufacturing of implants will be described. Implants were made of the 316L and Ti6Al4V metal powders. The finished test pieces were subjected to non-destructive as well as destructive mechanical and material structural testing to qualify implants by using the appropriate quality assurance system.