The Plastics Technology Center (Andaltec) has carried out a project to help improve the results of an intervention to remove a cancer using three-dimensional printing technology. The center based in Martos has altruistically designed and manufactured in its 3D printing center a model of the breast of a seven-year-old girl in order to help the surgeon prepare for the intervention in advance and thus make it less aggressive. and with better results.
The minor had been diagnosed with a tumor in the chest, very close to the heart, so the surgeon had to carry out a very precise intervention due to the complexity of the location of the cancer. Through the 3D printer manufacturer Grupo Sicnova, Andaltec received the request to help in this special situation. Technicians at the technology center used an ultrasound of the affected area to make a three-dimensional model and print a complete piece that replicated the entire block of ribs, the heart and the tumor, which was printed with a differentiated color.
The complete piece replicates the entire block of ribs, the heart and the tumor, printed with a differentiated color.
“Once it was done, we sent the model so that the medical team could plan on a real scale how to enter through the ribs to be able to perform this delicate operation,” explains Miguel Ángel Jiménez, head of the center’s Prototype department. Andaltec has carried out this work altruistically in order to help the minor, which is why this action is within its Corporate Social Responsibility program.
The health sector is one of the areas for which the Andaltec 3D printing center works, which has carried out numerous jobs for companies in sectors such as the automobile, aeronautics or technical plastic since its inauguration in 2015. This facility has printers of the most outstanding technologies of additive manufacturing of polymers: MJP (MultiJet Printing), FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling), SHS (Selective Heat Sintering) or SLA (Stereolithography).
In this 3D printing center, technicians can print prototypes according to the demands of precision, size, resolution and surface quality, and on different materials simultaneously, with different stiffness and elasticity. In addition, it has the possibility of developing new composites according to its R + D + i lines and producing plastic raw material to be used in these printers for novel purposes. With all this, Andaltec puts the complete additive manufacturing process at the service of companies, which includes from the design of the part to the final manufacture of the prototype or the requested part.