My medical molding projects

Nice! My mother had that branch replaced - twice.

For sense of scale, it is relative to the pelvis

And in real life (same):

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Wow! Thanks…that is so cool. I didn’t think it was so large, and you are 3D printing the pelvis too? How about a Tricorder too. - Rich

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Well haha, trying to print the pelvis. 60 hours into the pelvis print, the filament ran out… Ugh

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OK, so update on the pelvis. After consulting with various colleagues we have determined that this pelvis in fact carries a curse. It has finished tonight after 51 hours, and 837g of plastic. However yesterday afternoon, the supports on the front came off the bed and tipped over. I ran in and managed to relatively quickly tape it back up in the air at the right height (the orange tape). The orange tape peeled off under the heat, so put clear tape over it. Overnight the thing started to tip as it got higher (since it was now only taped in place at the bottom up in the air) which I could see from home via the raspberry pi that monitors the printer at the lab. So rushed in early and put a second band of tape to secure it, and while the supports look ugly, they did manage to perfectly support the front. 3D printing is all about knowing how to jury rig solutions to save long running prints.

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Having a :glowforge: there, to be able to cut some buttressing on the fly, would be handy indeed.

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Going from detail polygon forms to mathematically precise surfaces (i.e. NURBS) is something I have yet to se as being worth the time to convert. Simple forms can be done, yes. I think the approach you are taking is very practical, and good work! Thank you for sharing.

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That is true, but @lcuellar63 was saying I could have cut new supports, which in this case are pretty simple. Actually a piece of acrylic or plywood cut in strips (theses are linear supports with angles set to 90) so that would have worked (actually probably better that my taping… have to keep that one in my back pocket…

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The worst part is I am actually in the hospital, and can see my printer via remote, but am too busy on call to get back to the lab to see the actual print… Well off call in a little while so maybe I will snag it on the way out…

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And so far so good, we have the iliac/femoral artery in PVA and the pelvis in PLA/PHA (soon to be made radio-opaque) then have to print the outer-skin mold…

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They are gorgeous! :grin:

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I still never want to see mine that exposed.

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if someone is holding your artery and half your pelvis like that you have way bigger problems1 :wink:

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Wow! I’m amazed at how (relatively) forgiving some part of the process are, but nowhere on this level.

Modern medicine and technology is amazing!


Will be interesting to see what comes out during the next decade…

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A couple of the cool medical things my company is working on.

Tactile feedback through prosthetics.

PTSD brain implant.

Acoustic apheresis (separating good blood from the bad parts)

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But since you are working with the Brigham, the blood that comes out of the process will be evil blood. Now if you came across the street to BIDMC, now then it would be useful! :wink:

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Nice work! Those things are pretty robust!

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So today’s update is, finally working on the outer mold (i.e. the body that will hold the pelvis, artery and vein). The challenge here is this is the largest polymesh (STL) I have ever worked with for a cleanup. It is 1.2GB in size! The dimensional accuracy is astonishing so cleanup is problematic (my fan has been on full on my workstation for quite a while).

The model is VERY accurate (I will leave what is under the drape to the imagination, but way more detail than I wanted on my 5K monitor) since you notice you can see the holes in the buttons of the shirt! Did the reconstruction at 0.6mm resolution Z-axis. Had to paint out the “naughty bits” to get ready, along with removing the sheet and table under the patient along with that drape. Then put that mold into a cube and did a boolean subtract, and then split the mold. Keeping this geometry manifold is a challenge. Keep having to export it into Emendo and remove the non-manifold stuff, which takes 15 minutes of grinding…

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Wow! Mother of resolution.

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