Dispense-plotting: Potential of a Rapid Prototyping Technique for the Fabrication of Porous Calcium Phosphate-based Ceramics

摘要

Rapid Prototyping (RP) is a new technology in research for producing ceramic parts. This technology is particularly suitable for the fast and accurate fabrication of individual and specially tailored single parts, as e.g. implants. Additionally, the required defined pore characteristics for e.g. bone substitutes can be well realised. In this work the potential of the RP-technique dispense-plotting will be discussed by the example of fabricating a ceramic bone substitute material based on calcium phosphates. Dispense-plotting is a generative technique, where the parts are fabricated out of rods layer by layer. Scaffolds with a lay-down-pattern of 0/90° were produced. The influence of the processing parameters was investigated and the influence of these parameters on rod diameter and pore size of the resulting scaffolds was determined. The scaffolds were characterised regarding their porosity and compressive strength. The fabricated scaffolds can be used for bone substitution or for tissue engineering applications.