3D Printing

3D Printing Saved Baby’s Life

3-dprinting-saves-babys-lifeMuch of the time, technologies like 3D printing are used for non-essential reasons like creating plastic toys or models. However, recent news shows that this tech was used to print out an airway splint. This splint saved a three-month old baby’s life. That is pretty essential, don’t you think?

This life-saving procedure combined the best of medical knowledge and technology to create a synthetic part that could be used in a infant boy who couldn’t breathe on his own.

The little boy is named Kaiba Gionfriddo. He’s from Youngstown, Ohio and was born with a condition called tracheobronchomalacia. It’s very rare and only one in 2,200 babies have it. This defect makes it so the airways are so weak that they collapse when trying to breathe or cough.

It was discovered that Kaiba had this condition when his parents were at a restaurant. The little boy just stopped breathing and turned blue. He was saved when CPR was performed but it was quickly found out that he had a chronic condition. Before 3D printing could be used to help him, he was placed on a breathing machine at Akron Children’s Hospital. The boy was given a bleak prognosis.

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3D Printing Service Could Make You a Stormtrooper

3d-printing-service-stormtrooper-Disney
Picrure credit: Disney

It seems the whole idea of 3D printing is really taking off all over the place, even in unexpected locales. In fact, Disney’s Hollywood Studios will soon be offering visitors to the park in Florida the chance to be immortalized as a Stormtrooper or in the famous frozen in carbonite pose Han Solo was so unfortunate to don. It’s a true must for any Star Wars fan!

All of this is made possible thanks to a 3D printing service, which was available during Star Wars Weekends in the park. It ran between the last half of May and June 9th. The carbonite offering was available last year but the Stormtrooper figurine offering is new for this year.

The technology is actually quite sophisticated. In fact, it’s using a much higher resolution than previously available on the consumer market and offers up a rather detailed and clear scan of the person’s head before it’s printed out in the Star Wars figurine.

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3D Scanning Bureau Added Special Effects Shots in Life of Pi Movie

Life of Pi 3D ScanningR&H i.e. Rhythm and Hues is one of the largest and world-famous visual effects studio companies of the film industry. This time, R&H visual effects studio has completed most of its VFX shots featured in one of the 3D adventurous drama films named Life of Pi. This studio has hired the service of 3D Scanning bureau of Taiwan named LeaderTek. In this way, R&H studio has availed the benefits of the power of 3dimensional data capture for making different types and amazing special effects in the movies.

Direction of the Movie ‘Life of Pi’

Ang Lee, winner of the Academy Award is responsible for directing the movie of Life of Pi. The entire movie has drawn upon big team of renowned artists spanning the offices of R&H in approximately six different places of the world. These include India, Los Angeles, Taiwan, Vancouver and Kuala Lampur. R&H studio has taken the responsibility of covering more than hundreds of shots of visual effects to be presented in 3dimensional stereo.

Special Effects Shots in the Movie

Some of the special effects shots may include digitally recreated skies and water, Bengal tiger, floating raft, lifeboat, Meerkat Island, digitally created skies and water and several other additional features. LeaderTek used 3D laser scanner of FARO Focus for digitally capturing the floating raft and lifeboat.

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3D Printing Used for Skull Implant

Technology plays a vital role in developing new methods of treatment for many different conditions. However, did you know that 3D printing can actually be used in the development of implants? Specifically, this technology was used just this year to replace a man’s skull.

Oxford Performance Materials  was charged with creating the implant to be placed in an American patient. The surgery that resulted actually replaced 75{ed34752d3d9237811f2899a265685e36705e4e86722207f201c96dd1cfc4a167} of the man’s skull. The implant itself is called the OsteoFab Patient Specific Cranial Device or OPSCD and was made out of polyetherketoneketone thermoplastic. The material itself is not rejected by the human body and won’t even interfere with future x-rays.

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