Place Exploration and Cutting Edge Medicine
It is Tech Tuesday and we are taking a look at Space, Medicine and Printers. Space and Medicine are commonly linked together but you may ask “What do printers have to do with either one of those things?” Well a new printing technology may revolutionize both.
Printing in 3D
No this isn’t 3D photo printer; this is a layered printing system that can make just about anything out of dust sized particles. This system used to be limited to soft powders but is now being used to create everything from high tech models to body part replacements.
Iron Jaw, How about Titanium
This year an 83 year old woman was the first person to receive a printed bone, it was her jaw bone and it is like no other. The jaw was constructed in less than 6 hours and was a perfect replacement for her old jaw bone. The advantages of receiving a 100% custom fit replacement are easy to imagine but the result is cheaper and more efficient medical technology. This is new but it is not expensive; in fact, once the initial cost of the machine is overcome, the parts can be produced for relatively competitive costs.
The result of the operation was a success and to the surprise of the surgeons, the woman was speaking with her synthetic jaw within 24 hours.
Space Printers
NASA and Private Investors have been looking at this same technology for space exploration. The focus is weight reduction. Imagine the weight savings of being able to leave 90% of all tools
and equipment on earth. Instead you would take a printer and a bag of titanium powder to produce what you need. You would be able to print the tools as needed, never having to carry the weight of unused supplies.
What’s The Future, We don’t know but we hope this technology can achieve a little in both areas. We would all love to take a cheap trip into space while knowing that if we seriously hurt ourselves, we could just replace the broken parts.
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Mark Yatman- YourSeniorCareNetwork.com
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