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A German-Polish high-performance center of the Fraunhofer Society is researching new technologies for the use of 3D printing processes known as additive manufacturing in medical technology. The Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS in Dresden and the Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology IWU in Chemnitz cooperate with the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and the Center for Advanced Manufacturing Technologies CAMT at the Technical University of Wroclaw. The Federal Ministry of Education and Research supports the project financially.Its about high-tech dentures prostheses that independently recognize inflammatory reactions in the body or individually adapted seats for wheelchairs. A German-Polish high-performance center of the Fraunhofer Society is researching new technologies for the use of 3D printing processes known as additive manufacturing in medical technology. For the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft it is one of two international centers of excellence launched in March that are explicitly dedicated to cross-border cooperation. Additive technologies hold interesting opportunities especially for manufacturers in medical technology. 3D printing enables individual solutions tailored to the patient as well as the integration of new improved properties and functions in components. This is usually not only significantly more cost-effective than conventional methods but also allows new therapies and treatment approaches to be provided. The ATeM performance center founded in 2021 aims to make additive manufacturing an established standard tool in medical technology in the coming years. The project partners want to present the first demonstrators by the end of the year.The partners are exploring new fields of application in various individual projects. One of the projects deals with the opportunities of 3D printing in dentistry. Another application scenario concerns functional expansions such as the direct integration of sensors into medical components. Lab-on-a-chip systems with which organ functions and processes in the human body can be displayed on a chip are also to be printed in the future . This can be used for example when testing drugs.How fiber-reinforced 3D structures can be printed for example for cranial implants made from the biocompatible thermoplastic polyetheretherketone PEEK or individually adapted seats for wheelchairs and high-strength orthoses is currently being researched by scientists in two projects headed by Fraunhofer IWU.A Fraunhofer Project Center has existed since 2008 operated by Fraunhofer IWS and the CAMT of the Technical University of Breslau. The model of performance centers which has been tried and tested for many years by the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft in Germany has a strong focus on knowledge transfer and industrial cooperation. It is now also providing important impetus for strengthening the European economy across borders.Those involved want to present the first demonstrators for the various projects as early as the end of the third quarter of 2021. This can be done quickly because the partner institutions have already implemented important foundations for current research in various preliminary studies in the past. The ideas for new medical products and therapies should benefit patients in the near future through industrial partnerships or possible spin-offs.
