New features and functions in implants through an innovative design approach and additive manufacturing technology

At the current state of the art, endoprostheses are predominantly manufactured by cutting, forming or casting technologies. Another, rather new way of implant manufacturing is the Additive Manufacturing process called Beam Melting, using a Laser or Electron beam. In particular the customized production with no need for any type of tooling, combined with the unique freedom of design spark interest in this technology for implant manufacturing. The use of Beam Melting enables the fabrication of endoprostheses with almost any design of inner and outer geometries. This paper focuses on the integration of completely new features and functions into endoprostheses which give various added value opportunities to implants that where unthinkable before. Strategies from tooling applications of Additive Manufacturing were adopted which have proved very successful in giving added value to tools and dies by implementing complex inner cooling channels. The paper describes two innovative strategies to integrate new features and functions into standard implants, e. g. hip stems, by the creation of inner design features like functional channels, cavities, surface and inner structures to integrate additional active components (e. g. shape memory alloys)