Design of biological stents using 3D printer

• Main Author: Gowtham Subramanian
• Other Authors: School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering
• Format: Theses and Dissertations
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/61094
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

With the development of rapid prototyping in the mid-1980, many applications have benefited from faster processing of products with no use of specific tool or machineries. Nevertheless, the application of these rapidly developing prototyping techniques in biomedical engineering has been limited due to the rigorous and stringent performance and poor part reproducibility. This project aims at expanding the use of rapid prototyping in the production of biological stents. Among the various technologies of rapid prototyping, three dimensional printing (3DP) has been alarmingly popular due to its inherent capacity to print the stents directly with designed shape and controlled chemistry. In this work, five stents differing in geometry are printed. The stents have the geometry of honey comb, circle, spiral, semi-circle and partial hexagon with connectors. All five stents are mechanically tested for breaking strength, yield strength and young’s modulus using Dynamic Mechanical Analysis (DMA) machine. The stent that has honey comb structure proved to be the best with young’s modulus more than 10MPa. The stents without connector have better breaking and yield strength while compared to the stent with connectors.