3D Printing New Knees
From: Industrial Equipment News - 04/20/2017

Printable hydrogel matches the strength and elasticity of human cartilage

A team at Duke University is 3D printing knee implants with a hydrogel that
matches the strength and elasticity of human cartilage.

According to the researchers, this could mean creating custom replacement
parts using info taken from your CT scan. Specifically, they printed menisci,
the little piece between your shin and thigh bone that stops your bones from
rubbing together.

Until now, researchers have struggled to create recipes for synthetic
hydrogels that are equal in strength to human cartilage and also
3D-printable. Duke's recipe is one part stiff hydrogel, one part soft and
stretchy hydrogel, and then they add in the special ingredient, a
nanoparticle clay. This allows the hydrogel to flow like water out of the
printer head, and then immediately harden into its printed shape. They call
it a double network hydrogel.

The entire process, from scan to finished meniscus, only took a day and they
did it on a cheap, $300, 3D printer.

Read the entire article at:
https://today.duke.edu/2017/04/3-d-printable-implants-may-ease-damaged-knees

Link:
3D Printing of a Double Network Hydrogel with a Compression Strength and
  Elastic Modulus Greater than those of Cartilage
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsbiomaterials.7b00094