Fripp Design Research, headquartered in the UK, has rapidly been making strides in 3D printing silicone breast implants. Their new technology, Picsima, represents an incredible breakthrough, as it allows 3D printing with silicone.

Fergal Coulter, a lecturer and PhD candidate at the College of Art & Design and Built Environment at Nottingham Trent University, created an interesting project to test 3D scanning and printing on inflated structures using multiple layers of hard silicone on an inflated silicone balloon.

Colleen Murray lost her left ear in car accident 55 years ago became the first person in Australia to receive a new ear produced from 3D Printing technology. Prosthetist Brenton Cadd and team made the ear after using a scan and skin-like silicon material.

Faculty of Medicine at the University of Rijeka completed a complicated operation by attaching a 3D-printed ear to a patient who lost his ear due to skin cancer (Basal Cell Carcinoma). On February 20, Dr. Dubravko Manestar attached the ear which was made from biocompatible silicone.

Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are working on 18-month study in collaboration with Autodesk Research, a 3-D design software company, to design the helmet that can prevent brain injuries suffered in sports. Experimenting on different materials for the Helmet, Silicone seems to be perfect for foam pads while they will continue to patent new discovering during the on-going project.

The first ever Industrial 3D Printer for Silicones by Germany’s Wacker Chemie will be showcased at “K 2016” trade fair on 19th October at Düsseldorf / Germany. The “ACEO” Imagine Series K printer uses a drop-on-demand method where tiny silicone droplets are deposited on a substrate by layering process to produce a homogeneous product that does not differ much from injection-moulded parts.

Amedica has made its first complex, three-dimensional structures by a 3D printing process called Robotic deposition, or Robocasting which is is a freeform fabrication technique for dense ceramics and composites that is based on layered deposition of highly colloidal slurries. The final products have been confirmed for integrity and validity of the 3D printing method and have been shown to achieve similar theoretical density and microstructure attributed to the traditionally manufactured silicon nitride fusion devices currently in use with advantages in bone fusion, antibacterial behaviour and superior strength.

Anecdotal evidence had suggested that high-impact activities, such as roller coaster riding or bungee jumping, could result in spontaneous passage of kidney stones, however 3D printing has now been used to validate the efficacy of a trip to Magic Mountain next time you suffer from kidney stones.  A study was conducted at Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine where Dr. David D. Wartinger performed research on whether roller coaster rides can actually facilitate kidney stone passage. A 3D replica of a patient’s kidney was printed in clear silicone material and then was monitored with ureteroscopy during a roller coaster ride. The results verified that roller coaster rides can assist kidney stone passage.

A collaborative team of researchers from the National Taiwan University Hospital, the China Medical University Hospital, and Asia University have created a new bone substitute- Calcium Silicate Bone Scaffold that have both osteoconductive and osetoinductive potential to be used for bone grafts/repair required in people suffering from bone defects and disorders around the globe. The team explored the effects of various loading methods on novel grafting material bone morphogenetic protein-2 (BMP-2), which was loaded with a mesoporous calcium silicate (MesoCS) scaffold created with FDM 3D printing on a 3D bioprinter from GeSiM.

A team of engineers and medical researchers from the University of Minnesota (UMN) are working on creating Neural Scaffold that can help patients with spinal cord injury alleviate pain and gain control over functions like bladder, bowel, and muscle control again. The prototype contains 3D Printed Silicone Guide acts as a scaffold, over which neuronal stem cells are 3D Printed, which then later differentiate into neurons, and then it is implanted into the injured part of spinal cord.

Researchers from Seoul, Korea, worked towards using 3D Printing to enhance Spine Surgeries by creating a new Endoscope-Assisted Spine Surgery System involving combined cannula, featuring one cannula for the endoscope and the other for surgical instruments, with major and minor axis diameters of 10.34 mm and 9.16 mm, respectively. The creation of Test Spine Model involved: Create 3D Design from 2D data from MRI and CT scans; 3D Print spine components; Fabricate silicone molds with the 3D printed spine components; Make spine components with required properties and Assemble the patient-specific model. Imaging data was imported to slicing software, with models then 3D printed on a Creatable D3.