Remote villages, urban disasters and the battle fields are prime places where 3D printed medical tools can save lives. The U.S. military has been investigating how to use 3D printing to solve supply chain issues involving front-line soldiers. Now, a group of Army and Navy researchers have developed a plastic surgical kit that can be printed on-site and used to treat battlefield wounds.
The 3D printed surgical kit can includes: a Kelly hemostat, needle driver, tissue forceps, retractor, scalpel handle and Metzenbaum scissors. Stratasys Dimension printer are creating tools for the U.S. Military using ABSi-Ag as the build material. ABSi-Ag is a new plastic resin with silver loading that is under development by Stratasys.
Just a cursory search of ThingiVerse – a Web site for sharing and distributing designs for 3-D printing – uncovers, among various items – a knee and joint protractor, a syringe adaptor head, forceps, a hemostat, and a “logically working model of a human hip replacement,” all available to download and print using a commercially available 3-D printer. Some of these devices (like the hip replacement) come with disclaimers.
A short video of 3D printed hemostats
