Selective laser sintering of bio-metal scaffold

This study presents a fabrication process of bone scaffold model with titanium biomedical materials by rapid prototyping (RP) technique. A RP machine with Nd: YAG laser (120W) was developed to produce bone scaffolds using a selective laser sintering (SLS) technology. The slurry state of biomedical material consists of titanium powder and silica sol mixed at 2g : 1g weight ratio was used in the proposed process. This biomedical titanium slurry was solidified after scanning by a laser beam. The process parameters of laser were tuned at a laser power of 15W, a frequency of 16KHz and a scanning speed of 100mm/s to build the titanium biomedical bone model within 3hrs. Experimental results show that the compressive strength was 142 MPa after post treatment at 900 degrees C. The mechanical strength of these titanium biomedical material specimens by post sintering process is enhanced. Using this RP machine of layer additive processing, a bone scaffold with complex shape structure can be constructed. Therefore, this process has a greater potential for fabrication bio-metal bone scaffold in tissue engineering. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.