
Jaw 3D printed by NewPro3D.
NewPro3D has announced it has successfully achieved new 3D printing speeds for its Intelligent Light Interface technology, reaffirming its position as the fastest 3D printing technology on the market to date.
Back in January, TCT reported on the Vancouver-based company that was quietly smashing current industry speeds on the show floor at CES. Now three months on, backed by interest from the medical field, the company is now focused on printing even faster and bigger cross sections with a keen eye on tackling mass production.
Likened to the much-talked about CLIP technology from Carbon3D, NewPro3D claims print speeds up to 30% faster than its competitors with print times up to 4.3 minutes for 55 mm. These impressive speeds are being put to the test in the medical sector where the technology is being harnessed to print patient-specific medical models in under 30 minutes.
Dr. Bruno Correa de Azevedo DDS MS, a Diplomate of the American Board of Oral and Maxillofacial Radiology and Assistant Professor of Oral and Maxillofacial Radiology of the University of Louisville School of Dentistry, sought the help of NewPro3D to see if this technology could ultimately reduce a patients’ time in the operating room.
“We have printed parts for emergency patients that usually would take weeks to be printed, having them available in less than an hour has huge implications on the medical field,” Dr. Correa de Acevedo, commented.
3D technologies are already widely accepted in the healthcare sector with 3D scanning and 3D printing techniques being used for pre-surgical planning and custom patient-specific implants. Now NewPro3D want to dramatically reduce the time frame between taking scan data, printing and delivering a part to the surgeon so that patients can be treated much faster.
Even with these competitive print speeds, initially the time taken to print an entire skull with NewPro3D’s first iteration of its technology was still around the four-hour mark. Unsatisfied with this, the team set out to reduce this to less than 45 minutes for a finished piece. The result was even better than they had expected with the skull taking only 30 minutes and the jaw to 21 minutes. Opening up “a new line of thought and rational”, NewPro3D aims to bring this number down even further in the coming weeks.
Watch the video below to see the NewPro3D machine in action.