Name: Webinar: Non-Metal Additive Manufacturing for Medical Devices: New Material Options for Prototyping and Development
Uploaded: 2026-10-01T17:00:06.971Z
Duration: 1 h
Description: Webinar: Non-Metal Additive Manufacturing for Medical Devices: New Material Options for Prototyping and Development

Transcript for "Webinar: Non-Metal Additive Manufacturing for Medical Devices: New Material Options for Prototyping and Development": Hello and welcome everybody to our, second webinar in our three d printing metal three d printing webinar series for non metal additive manufacturing for medical devices, new material options for prototyping and development. We're really excited to have you with us today. Before we begin, just a quick housekeeping note. Please enter any questions you have in the chat throughout the webinar and we'll answer them at the end of the webinar in the order that they are received. Now it's my pleasure to announce today's presenter Alex Lostbike. Alex is a field applications engineer too here at Proto Labs with more than eight years experience with helping manufacturers evaluate and implement additive manufacturing applications including projects involving DMLS and medical grade materials. He also holds an executive MBA with a health sector management certificate from Duke University bringing a unique blend of technical expertise and health care industry insight. We're excited to have Alex join us today. And with that, I'll pass it over to Alex. Thank you. Sounds good. Thank you, Kaylee, and, hello, everyone. It's a pleasure to have you all here today, especially, to discuss a little bit more about the plastic materials, that we offer for our three d printed service line. I suppose, you know, to kind of make the most of the time, as Kaylee had mentioned, if you have any sort of questions, feel free to add those into that chat window that's kind of shown on screen. So that way, you know, we could be able to answer them towards the end of our session, where we have a dedicated Q and A time slot for that. So without further ado, I suppose we shall go ahead and begin. So with regarding to the agenda, you know, this kind of gives like a brief overview of the subject matter that we're just going to briefly discuss. Initially, talking a little bit more about the polymer applications, effectively kind of showing where each technology and where each material may be able to shine, especially within a medical lens. In addition, we'll kind of elaborate a little bit further on the material offerings that we've recently added in, one of which would be an ABS like value material and another one which is, I suppose, will be the highlight of today's presentation will be the medical white material that we offer now in our AP, which is our Advanced Photopolymer lineup. In addition, we'll talk through a little bit more about selection criteria and how best that we could be able to support from the Proto Labs side, not only just for additive manufacturing but also as a manufacturing partner. And lastly, of course we have a Q and A session at the very end, so feel free to kind of tee up any questions as things are ready to go along. So with regarding to non metal three d printing or I suppose polymer three d printing for medical device development, it is kind of worth noting the type of questions that you would end up having to ask yourself as you're, you know, coming up with a new device or even just a new prototype for that matter. Making sure that you have more of a better process selection. I suppose by process we mean our three d printing processes. It could be stereo lithography, it could be select laser sintering, multi jet fusion, polyjet for instance. Being able to choose the right process that is best suited for your current stage in the application, that's something at least worth bearing in mind. Not only just the process alone, but also the material and making sure that you do make a smarter selection with regarding to the material. Bearing in mind material properties such as whether or not something's chemically compatible with, say, the materials that you have in hand or the application that you have in hand and going on from there. In addition, it's making sure that not only is three d printing really commonly well known for its prototyping capabilities, but also it could operate with a low to medium scale type of production capabilities as well. Throughout this presentation, we'll kind of mainly focus more on the prototyping type side the three d printing aspect, which a lot of people are very familiar with. And we'll kind of elaborate on the niche cases where it may not be so familiar with regarding to, prototyping. So being able to kind of help with a faster iteration makes it a lot easier and a lot smoother to get to market and be able to achieve more of that market share. Now, I suppose with a lot of things, usually a lot of good things start with a lot of good questions. In this case here with regarding to the real question, majority of the time with three d printing most will say, okay, you know, what is what is the best material that they can go for? Or can we even three d print this, you know, this concept or this device? Those are some good questions, but if you go a couple of layers deeper, you could be able to ask even better questions such as, what decision does this prototype need to support? In other words, depending on, is it a mechanical property, is it a chemical property? Does it need to, kind of, pass a certain tolerance spec? You know, is it is it accurate, in terms of, like, a form fit type of application? A lot of good questions like that. In other words, if you can peel back more of the layers, you'll start to get to a lot more of the better questions to bear in mind from there. We'll touch on these a little bit as we go through this presentation here. Now, I briefly hinted at this regarding those development stages. You're asking the right questions. For instance, if it's an early concept or we're more focused on the form and fit of the application for something like that, you need something that has true type tolerances, a high level of feature resolution, and good overall accuracy. Or in some cases, if you're kind of more focused on the engineering build with regarding to the function. Right? Is the mechanical properties of this prototyping material going to closely mimic it, not exactly, you know, replicate the mechanical properties that you're looking for with your, you know, functional, with your functional product at the end? In addition, you could also go into, like, pretest, in other words, with handling parts. Right? You know, is there a way that these parts are being handled correctly? Am I selecting the right material for this particular, you know, stage of that process of actually handling the parts itself? In addition, you could also look into, for instance, assembly. Let's say, for instance, if you have like a device that requires multiple components, like a housing that has multiple components. Three d printing, it does allow for some geometric flexibility. So you can be able to combine assemblies, for instance. And, you know, rather than have 15 smaller components, perhaps you could be able to boil it down to two or three, which makes it a lot easier with regarding to verification, validation, paperwork, and things like that. So kind of being able to flex those creativity questions of, you know, can this part be assembled in fewer pieces? Lastly, with regarding to usability, most would say, you know, oh, yeah. This is usability. Right? It's... Can you use the prototype? Can you use the product? If you dig a couple of questions deeper, you could be able to ask yourself, well, how can we make a product that's more effective, right, or more easily usable or just more, you know, pleasant to work with, I suppose. So in that case, you can ask those right questions. And then from there, you could be able to kind of delve a little bit further with the, or I suppose, with your development, with the, the appropriate material and the appropriate process in mind. And so as with a lot of those good questions, you do have a lot of good, you know, avenues or a lot of good answers you could be able to proceed with from there. With regarding to this, you could say, for instance, like, you know, Proto Labs on our side here, we can be able to offer a lot of technologies and a lot of different materials, which could check off a lot of different boxes. The good news is for something like this, we do have a broader range of material options to be able to work with from there. In this case, for instance, sterile lithography, that is exactly where you could be able to go for finer feature resolution, tighter tolerances, a lot better with regarding to the surface finish of the part, especially if you do plan on injection molding further down the line. With selected laser sintering or multi jet fusion, both of those are powder based technologies. The good thing with those is that the materials that are used there are production grade type of plastics. So in other words, you would expect for those materials to be considered extremely durable, really ideal for functional parts, you know, things that could survive for years on end without suffering any sort of UV degradation or things like that. PolyJet, for instance, you know, it allows for a lot better for, I'm sorry, flexible prototypes. So in other words, like elastomeric type of options or different materials as I've got kind of like on camera here. You could be able to choose the hardness of PolyJet materials that we offer. So that way you could be able to choose something that's as flexible as a mousepad all the way up to something as about as rigid as a hard hat, for instance. So PolyJet could also work for a lot more of the visual prototypes. You know, if you're thinking about something that's more of an anatomical model, things like that, that's where PolyJet could also be able to shine as well. In addition, you have FDM, which is your, you know, basic, three d printed technology that most people would think of back when it rolled out, I think, when the patent was lifted back in 2009. That's your typical, you know, fusion... Or, sorry, extrusion type of method. So in other words, you got the, you know, the nozzle that's extracting or extruding, particular type of material, be it an ABS. It could be any sort of other polymers like that. And FDM really does shine, especially if you're trying to go for the the, you know, the quick type... The quick prototype, something where you could perhaps be able to match the exact material that you're looking for further down the line. So, you know, having that thermoplastic evaluation that's there for FDM does tend to kind of work out nicely in that aspect. And then lastly, what we do have is HPS or what we consider that hybrid photosynthesis process. And here you could be able to achieve what we call like our production grade photopolymer materials and in which you could have a full range of material properties that, you know, depending on where you are with regarding to your project, it really depends exactly what you're looking to prioritize. So some materials would be considered like a durable black type of material. Others are kind of more of a ceramic white type of, you know, color and mechanical properties. So whether it's something you're going for like a high temperature, you know, requirement for something like, you know, small scale molding Or if, for instance, if you're trying to go for, like, a medical white material, something that's biocompatible or can be easily sterilized, you know, that's something that we could be able to achieve with, HBS. So, on the Protolab side, we have it listed as, AP or advanced photopolymers, but it essentially utilizes this HBS technology. So the long short of it is there is a broad landscape that we do offer for the three d printing plastics that could be able to suit a lot of different needs. And if for whatever reason, if you have any questions, you know, during the quote setup process or, you know, even if you're just kind of bouncing around ideas, you know, feel feel free to get a hold of, you know, our application engineering team like myself or one of my colleagues and we'll be more than happy to kind of walk you through which material properties, that you're looking to prioritize and kind of help, narrow down onto a specific material that would be best suited for your application. One of which, I suppose that we are able to kind of hone in on would be stereo lithography. It's kind of the bread and butter that we've brought in from the ProLab side back when three d printing was kind of an up and coming technology. And so with, serial lithography, that's where we're able to get a lot of fine features. Crisp levels of detail, you could be able to get features down to about you know, two thousands of an inch. In other words, something about as thin as, you know, human hair. In some cases, layer lines that could be as thin as, you know, four thousands of an inch with, you know, more of a thicker resolution. If you can imagine that, that would be, you know, the thickness of a sheet of paper. So, you know, if you're thinking of your classic FDN style where the layers are, you know, extremely evident and, you know, you could bump your fingernail just going up and down. With SLA, the layers themselves are so thin that it would be very similar to like a fresh stack or, you know, I suppose a fresh stack or a ream of printer paper, where if you run your finger... Your fingernail along the side of it there, that's essentially what the layer lines would would be for sterile lithography. So with that you do get smooth surfaces, especially if part orientation is able to play a factor as well. So smooth up facing glossy surfaces and the sidewalls as I had mentioned they're very similar to you know a stack of, print or ream of printer paper. You can also be able to apply other different, surface levels or surface textures as needed. So for instance, what we call our standard finish for serial lithography is very similar to, like, a, smooth frosted glass type of texture. So we're able to kind of blast all the sides of the surface such that you could be able to get a more homogenized appearance. So it could be very well, you know, very well suited for, like, a more cost effective type of display piece or presentation piece or even if you plan on going for, like, a matte injection molded part down the line, you know, being able to kind of see what that surface structure could look like is is something that we can be able to help achieve. And lastly, it kind of mentions there about early functional evaluation. Functional prototypes again with SLA is that we do have a broader range of those material mechanical properties within sterile lithography. So ABS like, you know, it's very similar to, like, the plastic of a LEGO brick. But we also can expand on, you know, the two other ends of, you know, the flexibility of materials. Right? So for instance, we have our polypropylene like material there. That one is allowing for, like, a, you know, what we call a semi flexibility. It's very similar to, like, the bristles of a thick comb where, you know, if a feature is thin enough, you'd be able to apply a short gradual force. It allows the, the plastic to be able to flex and, you know, you release it. It will be able to slowly go back to its original shape, but, you know, too strong or too quick of a force, and it could perhaps maybe snap the feature. Again, it's all very geometry dependent. So that's where my engineering team could be able to kinda help, you know, carry that discussion. In the other end of the materials is something that we could circle into that are more, you know, polycarbonate like or something that's more ceramic like. If we're talking about stiff, inflexible parts, you know, something where you wanna make sure that that, you know, that particular feature is not going to bow or bend, or if you're looking for something that requires a high temperature, requirement. So in other words, you know, for instance, like small scale molding or if you're trying to three d print a mold tool, for instance. Something like that is is easily achievable with, the right material and stereolithography. Now, I suppose we'll go into a brief lineup of what two of our most recent newer offerings that we have within our three d printing lineup here for plastics. One of which here is considered this ABS like Bayou material. I believe we've got an example part here. I'm going to show it on screen at the moment. Bayou Blue is what I like to call it here. And effectively, what it does is that it's really good for a quick turnaround type of prototype. So you do get the crisp level of detail that you would get with sterile lithography, while making sure to be served as the most cost effective sterile lithography material that's out there. So the best way that I've seen this application kind of brought in is that if for whatever reason if you have, you know, three d printers in... At your home or, for instance, three d printers at your company, for instance, there's just, you know, a massive backlog or you're looking to prototype something and you need a part in hand faster than what your team is able to, you know, be able to accommodate, That's exactly where AVS like Volley could be able to shine. So we could be able to kinda take that geometry, get it quoted, and be able to turn, turn around a a fast lead time, such that, you you know, you would not be able to worry about clogging up the schedule on your printers at your facilities, for example. So ABS like value tends to be a pretty good application for that particular niche. And one of the newer ones that I'm more or less personally a fan of here is the medical white material that we have rolled out. So this one here is that MedWhite 10. Effectively, what it's really good for is for those, you know, making sure you hit those right standards regarding, biocompatibility, cytotoxicity, sensitization, irritation, things like that. So, you know, in this case here, it's capable of meeting the r... Or I suppose it's capable of meeting the ISO 10,993 dash five and the dash 10 requirements. Being able to hit those standards is really good for this particular material. I've got a part right here. I'll be able to kind of show it on screen as well. It's also worth noting here that it does have a general thermal resistance. I I believe this one here is able to hold up to two sixteen Fahrenheit or 102 Celsius. In this case here, it's, you know, make sure that the part does not deflect as it approaches into those particular temperatures that are there. As you can kind of also see, you know, it does hold a really good, smooth surface, especially for a lot more of the organic shapes and the organic geometries. So for something like this, it really helps out for, like, beautiful display models, prototypes, you know, different applications and things like that. And lastly, it's also really good in terms of it being a, you know, true to CAD, with the level of accuracy and the crisp level of detail that you would get. So again, this is kind of, you know, that exact same material, the Metwipe material that's mentioned. And so for something like this, it does check off a lot of those boxes, especially if you're trying to, you know, make sure that the part is... Meets the right standards, regarding biocompatibility and cytotoxicity. It is also sterilizable as well. You know, it's able to withstand your your typical autoclave as well as gamma and ethylene oxide sterilization processes as well. So kind of bearing in mind here, I'll kind of, you know, fly through these couple of slides here and then we'll jump right into q and a as needed. So regarding to matching the material to the use case, right, you know, it depends exactly on you know, what particular product or particular prototype that you're looking at or that you're working with. It could be a form model. It could be more of an ergonomic handle, snap fit housings, fluid concepts. For instance, I've got a microfluidics example kind of shown here. You know, choosing the right material that, you know, has the appropriate surface finish because, you know, at the end of the day, the surface finish is going to dictate the the parts level of clarity. So making sure that you'd make the right selections that are there. I suppose in addition, fixtures and sterilization adjacent evaluations, making sure that the right material ends up being selected. You know, we do have a lot of our our resources on our website at proto labs dot com. There you could be able to kinda see where each particular material is able to, you know, shine. But if you do have, like, you know, material property requirement that, you know, is competing against some others or you're trying to make sure you get the best bang for your buck regarding the material itself, you know, that's that's where my engineering team is able to kinda help and walk you through that for your, you know, particular project or, you know, for your, particular application. And lastly here, kind of regarding the common selection mistakes, especially ones that I've seen, you know, I've been working with, Proto Labs as an engineer for a little over eight years now. And so being able to kind of see, the common trends that I've noticed, be able to kind of relay them here, hopefully this kind of serves as a good, education point as well. So if you're trying to over specify early with regarding to say for instance your prototype, you know, be it a material or be it a mechanical property or something like that, trying to check off all the boxes, especially if it's still a prototype, you know it can be there may be a niche material that's out there but if for whatever reason if there's not that exact material that you're looking for it's always good to try to see if you can go for something that kind of serves as a good substitute material or perhaps you know double check and realign what the you know, the priorities that you're looking for for your particular material. Especially, you know, as mentioned, if it is a prototype. So that way if you ask yourself the right questions, you know, what exactly is this prototype intended to answer or what is it intended to support? You know, that way being able to select the right material could be a lot more of a streamlined process. In addition, you know, confusing prototyping resin or, you know, with a production resin for instance, you know, on the ProLab side here we do have a broad range of materials as I kind of mentioned earlier. And we have some that excel extremely well for prototyping. We have others that excel extremely well for, you know, production grade type of plastics. So, you know, if you find something that, you know, you want to say, hey, this is purely just a prototype and, you know, we're gonna kinda move on with a completely different material or completely the different process. Having those questions addressed upfront, helps out as well, especially, you know, if you're on the inverse side where you are looking for a material that is, you know, gonna be very similar to what's... You know, what will be considered your production grade type of plastic. So having those questions ahead of time allows us to be able to provide a stronger recommendation, be it, you know, regardless of where you are, with, your... The scope of your project. In addition, we also, you know, kind of briefly hinted at tolerances. Different technologies have different tolerance bands, and so, you know, if you're looking for something that requires a high level of accuracy, something like sterile lithography, could possibly be considered, kind of more ideal, especially if you start going into fine future resolution, you know, crisp level of detail, or even like a microfine or a very small scale type of print where, you know, attention to detail truly matters or tight tolerances truly matter. And, you know, for instance, the inverse of that, where, you know, if tolerances may not necessarily be the top priority for that particular application, then, you know, that broadens the range towards, you know, for instance, something that could be more like a cost effective plastic or perhaps maybe a lower resolution. Kind of balancing those trade offs is is something that we could be able to also assist with as well. And then lastly, you know, that's supposed to kind of serves as the umbrella of all these points mentioned earlier, Testing the incorrect property, right? So in other words, you know, if you're asking the right question, what exactly is this prototype, you know, intended to answer? Asking that question right at the start allows you to select the right properties or prioritize the right material properties such that the prototype that you get in hand is going to be the best value that you could be able to receive regardless of where you are with regard to your project. So overall key takeaway from you know if there's any one or two things that I would recommend walking away from this presentation from would be, you know, starting with defining that learning objective. Right? You know, what exactly is this, you know, product or this particular prototype intended to support. Right? Once you have that question defined first, then you can go into, you know, any sort of preliminary question or secondary questions, being able to pull away the layers from there. And from there, that's when you begin to pick the process and material and making sure that you're basically validating only what that prototype can honestly prove. That's something that you know tends to kind of be more of a prominent question especially for like chemical compatibility or biocompatibility, sterilization, things like that. Making sure that you have those questions addressed up front and so that way when you make the selection for the process and the material that it does end up being ideal for your particular application. I believe now we can be able to dive into the Q and A with regarding to questions. I believe here it looks like we have a question set up for Michael. It says, how fine of printing resolution can HBS printing get? It's a very good question and from my understanding, it can be a little bit more material dependent. We do have a ceramic like material versus a biocompatible material versus something that's more of a tough black. We also have a flame retardant material as well as an electrostatic dissipated material like ESD. Majority of these feature resolutions, we could be able to get down to 20 thousandths of an inch. Some cases, it could be a little bit smaller than that, but 20 thousandths of an inch, which is roughly the thickness of a business card, tends to be kind of, I suppose, the umbrella number that I would recommend. Again, it's very geometry dependent. So if you have like a very small feature, say for instance, like, you know, this HBS material that I mentioned earlier, the medical wipe, the threads you could possibly see kind of on the inside there as long as my camera is not blurring it out. You know, things that involve like a knife edge where they kind of come down to a very fine point. It's very geometry dependent. So I suppose that kind of hopefully answers that question. And if for whatever reason if you have a CAD file that you do upload and you want to make sure that, you know, you get the most feasibility with regarding to, you know, can a feature be printed, not only is quoting software able to kind of highlight and show where the, you know, the thin features may lie or if there's anything that's under that minimum feature size, but you could also be able to get my engineering team on the horn. You know, we're more than happy to kind of talk through your parts and and make sure that, you know, you have the correct design recommendations in mind. Let's see here if there are any further questions. Alright. So it doesn't look like there may be any other questions here at the moment. But in the meantime, as always, you know, feel free to throw in a couple more questions here. I know that, you know, we do have a couple I think it's about maybe three four minutes remaining of time here. But in the end, you know, three d printing it really does kind of help out with obviously a lot of the prototyping, you know, kind of what we've hinted at earlier, but as well as small to, you know, moderate scale type of production, especially if the geometry itself just can't be manufactured by other means, you know, such as like injection molding or perhaps even CNC. If you were to imagine this part here, for instance, this one would be basically a nightmare if not near impossible to manufacture by injection molding or even CNC. Parts like this where you do end up having a lot more geometric freedom tends to work out extremely well for three d printing. And then in addition, within the medical scope, something that's more tailored to the patient's anatomy, right? That's exactly where three d printing shines, especially making sure that you have something that's true to a specific patient or you know to a specific operation. If you're going for something that's more repeatable, you know something like that, the design allows could allow for injection molding. But three d printing, it does also kind of have its prominent areas where it can be able to shine as well. Let's see here. I believe it looks like we've had the last call for questions. I believe that, you know, as always, you know, if if this presentation ended up being extremely helpful, I'm glad to hear. If you do end up having any other questions further down the line, you know, be it, you know, within the next hour or within the next day, week, month, so on and so forth, feel free to kind of reach out to us. We're more than happy to assist from the Proto Labs side, especially making sure that your, you know, your prototypes, your designs, your materials, you know, everything kind of aligns with your project's priorities in mind. And so as always, feel free to reach out. More than happy to assist. And, yeah, feel free to keep us posted with your next project and hopefully we'll be able to support as best as we can. Thank you again for your time, and, hope you have a great rest of your day.