new member

[npkeith]

Hi all. Just found out about this group.
My name is Keith Anderson. I'm a nurse practitioner working with the
orthopedic group (and residency) at a major teaching hospital in
Southern California. I consider myself an educator for several
reasons - I have to teach my patients about their injuries and
surgeries on a daily basis, I help teach new residents to se the
patients as people rather than collections of broken bones, and I
teach nurses how to care for my patients. I'm also responsible for
the science portions of my son's homeschool education.

I was first exposed to 3D printing by one of my doctors, who had a
model made of a ct scan of a patient who's pelvis had a huge defect.
He used the model to create a custom prosthesis to fill that defect.
I was hooked. I started researching, and found the z-corp printers,
then I found Fab@home and RepRap. Finally I found MakerBot. This is
the printer that does what I want -
I could print models of vertebrae to show the patient what happens in
a back surgery, or what a total knee prosthesis looks like, or even
make a custom model of their broken bone, before and after the break
was repaired.

The possibilities boggle my mind. Print out the CT of the broken
wrist, life sized, so the surgeon can plan his surgery before he picks
up a knife - even have the plates bent into the right shape ahead of
time, then have them autoclaved and ready to go.... The orthotics
people could make hooks, or grippers, or whatever right there. They
could "lost plastic cast" them in aluminum if ABS isn't strong enough.

Now I need to come up with the money.... I've mentioned it to
numerous people - the chief of orthopedics, the orthotics and
prosthetics guys, the hand surgeons. Universally the response is
"Yep. Thats cool," followed by resounding silence. Gonna have to do
it myself.

I'm totally excited about this. Help me keep the enthusiasm long
enough to save up the money....
-Keith

[Conrad Farnsworth]

Well thats freaking awesome...but remember makerbot will have trouble printing anything too lifelike. because of overhangs and whatnot. I could donate my heated build platform once i upgrade to the ABP if that will help. and donate my mk4 when i upgrade to the mk5 plasturder. Its nice to see technology like this integrated into medical facilities :) 

--
Conrad Farnsworth
Lead electronic and technological engineer of project SAM

[npkeith]

Wow. Thanks for the offers Conrad. I'm so far away on the funding
though, I'm pretty sure the Thing-o-matic will be the base model by
the time I can afford anything... Let me know when you are ready to
upgrade, and I'll let you know if I'm anywhere close. Otherwise,
donate them to the nearest hackerspace with a Cupcake.

[Dlplanes]

That's pretty cool! Maybe you can end up doing what Bre once said, print out body parts, of course once that fits in the build platform. And with special materials. The Thing-O-Matic will start shipping in mid November, so I'm pretty sure that the CupCake will stay in stores till they start shipping the other once.