Soft Material 3-D Printer

The Soft Material 3-D Printer was developed to reduce the high costs of personalized medicine in the medical simulation industry. Products printed in 3-D are cost-effective if they are within tolerance and comparable in resulting properties to currently used molds. Such 3-D products allow quick, cheap production of simulated patient systems suited specifically to the patient. The printer was designed to take stereolithography files generated from images of a patient's organs taken by, for example, magnetic resonance imaging. The files are run through a layering program called Slic3r and output to the 3-D printer, which is equipped with an interface for changing settings to optimize the print job. The goal is to print objects using materials chosen for their similarity to human tissue and ease of ultrasound signal penetration, which is achieved using an extrusion print method with a silicone solution that simulates material properties within the range of human tissue once cured. The print specifications are manipulated by controlling pressure, temperature, composition, and pot timing. These factors allow a predicable result in terms of tolerance, reliability, and use in medical simulation.