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>> Right now I'm standing in front of a 3D printer.
This particular printer has a selective laser-centering machine,
which is a rapid prototyping machine that we use to build custom implants for clinical use
and also for research use in our lab.
What's going on inside the machine is a layer of polycaprolactone,
which is a biodegradable polymer is getting deposited on a building platform.
And a laser is then passing over that in a 2D pattern to meld to the powder,
and it's building up the tracheal splint layer by layer in the Z direction.
You can see the faint shadows of the 2D cross sections
of the tracheal splint on the build platform.
And in a few moments you'll see those areas start to darken as the laser traces
out its 2D path outlining the cross section of the next layer on the build platform.
One of the splint designs is 23 millimeters in length.
In order to populate the platform with about 30 copies
of that splint it takes roughly three and a half hours to build.
And it's 288 layers.
So our 3D printing of the tracheal splint build is done.
And I am going to open up the machine.
Opening the door.
And now I am carrying the build platform out of the machine.
Now I'm putting the build platform into our sieve,
which will help us separate the parts from the un-centered powder.
This is a hydraulic platform that's raising the platform up.
You can see the non-centered powder on top, which we will push off.
So now I am just using some forceps to take some of these splint designs out of the powder bed.
And you can see that the non-centered powder is loose.
And it comes off relatively easily.
So we will remove all of these splints, separate them from the powder,
and then the next step will be to use an air blasting cabinet to get the remainder
of the powder off of these implants.
OK. So now what I'm doing is I'm just using an air blasting gun and removing the powder.
And the longer splint is designed to go over the region on the left bronchus
that is collapsing when the patient exhales.
And the smaller splint is designed to go on to the area
on the right bronchus that's collapsing.
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