LayerWise - Additive Manufacturing for Medical and Dental Applications

LayerWise offers innovative production and engineering services to clients in industrial, medical and dental sectors using state-of-the-art additive manufacturing technology. Applications include patient-specific orthopaedic and CMF implants, implant-supported dental prostheses and medical instrumentation.

Additive manufacturing for medical applications

Unlike conventional manufacturing technologies like casting, forging or milling, LayerWise's selective laser melting technology allows the most complex metal components to be produced layer by layer, driven directly from CAD data. Since all articles are built up by successively adding very thin metal powder layers that are molten completely by a focused laser beam, any desired three-dimensional geometry can be realised.

Key advantages of additive manufacturing technology:

• Direct digital production from CAD data
• No tooling or time-consuming CAM preparation
• Very short lead times
• Wide variety of alloys, including titanium (ASTM grade 1, 2, 5 and 23), stainless steel (316L and 17-4), cobalt-chromium, etc.
• Mechanical, physical and biocompatibility properties approximate those of conventional materials
• Fully compatible with conventional manufacturing techniques (CNC machining, EDM, etc.)
• Economic production of medium-size series

Highly accurate selective laser melting products

Dimensional accuracy down to 50µm can be achieved. Parts measuring up to 250mm x 250mm x 250mm can be produced. High-resolution systems are capable of producing very thin walls with thicknesses down to 300µm. Selective laser melting products have a surface finish of around 5µm Ra. Accuracy and surface quality may be further improved by combining our additive manufacturing processes with CNC machining. Moreover, a variety of surface treatments is offered in order to obtain highly polished surfaces.

Complex machine components for additive manufacturing

The absence of design limitations offers designers the opportunity to develop highly functional machine components. A functional design may replace an assembly of conventional components, or incorporate optimised freeform transportation or cooling channels, etc. At the same time, additive manufacturing realises considerable weight reduction.

Custom or standard implants and instrumentation

Orthopaedic, cranial and maxillofacial implants (CMF) can be produced though additive manufacturing technology. Examples include acetabular cups, trauma fixation plates, spinal components and CMF plates. In addition to prototyping and serial production of standard components, custom prostheses can be manufactured through the seamless integration between the digital design and digital production stages.

Porous bone scaffolds enabling osseointegration

Artificial bone replacement materials can be produced very accurately from CAD designs. Strut widths down to 100µm can be realised, with pore diameters down to 250µm. By designing the actual porosity and producing the scaffolds with selective laser melting technology, highly consistent and repeatable mechanical properties and dimensions are realised. The porous structures can also be integrated into an implant design, allowing a better osseointegration than sprayed coatings, and improving long-term fixation of the implant.

Dental implant bars and bridges

Since additive manufacturing enables complex, patient-specific design, it is a perfect choice for the production of dental prostheses. DentWise implant bars and bridges achieve a fit accuracy better than 20µm at the implant interface and may integrate complex surface textures and sealing edges. More information can be found on the DentWise website.

About LayerWise

LayerWise was founded in 2008 in Belgium as a high-tech company focusing on metal additive manufacturing. Building on more than a decade of experience in this field and the availability of state-of-the-art production facilities, LayerWise services customers in industrial, dental and medical sectors.

We focus on exploiting the true benefits of additive manufacturing in order to increase the added value of the projects and products of our customers. To achieve this, we offer a complete service, including engineering, additive manufacturing, CNC finishing operations, surface treatment and quality control.

Our quality management system is certified according to ISO 9001 and ISO 13485 standards.