Materialise new achievement

Materialise, a Belgian company founded in 1991 and a pioneer actor in additive manufacturing all around the world. The company is active in many domains, especially in the medical sector. It concentrates on the research and development of solutions for the transfer of data to additive manufacturing machines. Materialise works with surgeons in order to improve medical solutions and the software they provide is powering new innovations in biomedical research.

Its latest achievement was made in Belgium with an orthopaedic surgeon, Roger Jaeken who has successfully performed the first total knee surgery that was pre-planned by means of the Materialise X-ray knee guide solution. Materialise reached to turn 2D X-ray images into 3D information and solutions through CT and MRI based knee guide technology. This achievement will allow the work from X-ray images to be more efficient. Therefore patients would not have to undergo some much time on CT or MRI scan. As a recall CT scan is used to view bone injuries, diagnosing lung, chest problems and detecting cancers and often used in emergency rooms as it takes 5 minutes. While MR scan is used to examine soft tissue in ligament, tendon injuries, brain tumours and take around 30 and 45 minutes. 

Materialise action on medical sector is divided on three departments, the biomedical engineering software and services, the surgical solutions for orthopaedics surgeons and the cranio-maxillofacial surgical solutions. 

Sources:

http://www.materialise.com  

http://inside3dprinting.com/

The turmoil of web generation

The beginning of this century is living an important turning in the sector of technology and innovation. The 3D printers industry is creating a whole new business mindset and opens new roads to economy.

3D printers, also know as additive manufacturing have become very known since the beginning of the 21st century. Three-dimensional printing allows important economies of scale as it is cheap as to produce a single item or a thousand of it. Rapid prototyping was the first use of additive manufacturing. Nowadays it has taken a huge expansion in its use. From the medical sector, to automobiles, aerospace, chemistry and also for domestic purposes. The last three years 3D printers and 3D scanners have been accessible, at a very reasonable price, to everyone who is interested in.

As Chris Anderson states, a British-American author and entrepreneur, “making things has gone digital”. Any individual, that could be an entrepreneur or an inventor or even neither of them, can create something online and then share it and produce it. Quoting Anderson “the biggest transformation is not in the way things are done, but who’s doing it”. Nowadays any individual could create or use anything that is done by a computer, entrepreneurs are no longer at the mercy of big companies in order to manufacture their ideas. This is changing the way business is being made.

Nevertheless this breakthrough innovation has its fears and limits as this technology for instance has been used to the manufacture of guns. Therefore as the sell of these printers cannot be controlled and the online prototype can be found easily, anyone can create a gun that works and use against other human beings.