With just under a month to go to the UK’s largest 3D Printing Expo — TCT Show + Personalize — the organisers continue to ramp up expectations that this year’s event will be as good as ever. The line up of speakers at the renowned conference that runs across the two days of the show is looking good, and the latest addition is Research and Development Manager at Peacocks Medical Group: Dr Jari Pallari. The TCT organisers report that this is a man at the forefront of the additive manufacturing healthcare frontier, with a decade of experience in medical applications of the technology and as such, he is considered an expert in this field. 3D printing in the healthcare sector is becoming an increasingly headline-grabbing topic, and so Pallari is set to realistically represent this industry at the event, running 25–26th September at the NEC, in Birmingham.
Pallari has already revealed the title of his presentation: “Foot and Ankle-Foot Orthotic Development Utilising Additive Manufacturing in the A-Footprint Project” and that it will cover the ever-expanding subject of additive manufacturing orthotics and prosthetics (O&P).
He commented: “The presentation will be about the research and development efforts done in the A-Footprint EU Framework 7 project to utilise additive manufacturing technologies for orthotics manufacturing. I will try to explain how additive manufacturing has been utilised in the O&P industry so far. This industry is still utilising a lot of very low tech manufacturing techniques and additive manufacturing has huge potential to change this.”
“Adopting these disruptive new technologies in the O&P field is very challenging but also very rewarding when the enthusiasm about additive manufacturing catches on and people really start thinking about the possibilities they enable.”
The expert’s enthusiasm for how far additive manufacturing could go is clear and he follows all aspects of the technology’s developments with interest.
“There is so much going on at this time and everyday something new pops up. The increasing accessibility and utilisation of additive processes to create optimised geometries for functional parts is something I find very interesting,” he said adding that he is particularly excited about his own work.
“We have just started work on two large EU FW7 projects and I look forward to those. We are members of the AddFactor and CassaMobile EU FW7 projects. The projects take different approaches and aim to enable the localised production of parts and products versus the central manufacturing approach. In the A-Footprint EU FW7 project, many engineering disciplines such as dynamic muscoskeletal modelling, finite element analysis and CAD were brought together to utilise the potential of additive manufacturing for medical device manufacturing.”
Pallari said he and his team have just launched the first commercial foot orthotic product. Christened PODFO, the Newcastle University-tested insole was built using SLS technologies and offers patients a lighter product that is more hygienic and has proven stronger and more durable than other products on the market.
This critical 3D printing field of application will also be covered in the first Market Report from 3DPI’s collaboration with Econolyst, which will see a full series published. The report is available now for pre-order, with only a few days left to purchase it at the early bird rate.
