14 DAY TRIAL // Casts are the standard means of keeping a limb in place while the bone heals, but there are ways of speeding up recovery, and ensuring a more complete healing, that can be included in a cast. Designer Denis Karasahin has shown this, and he combined it with 3D printing to boot.
The man has revealed the Osteoid cast, which uses a 3D printed exoskeletal structure modeled according to a 3D scan of the patient's arm.
Not only does this make the cast much, much less bulky and ugly, but it lets you scratch that itch that tends to crop up after a while too.
More importantly, however, the cast boasts ventilation openings that implement a Low Intensity Pulsed Ultrasound (LIPUS) bones stimulation system.
It isn't meant to be active all day, but if you do hold 20-minute sessions daily, you're supposedly cutting down healing time by 38%.
All because the ultrasound boosts heal rate by up to 80% in non-union fractures. A single button allows you to switch the ultrasound generator on and off. A colored LED indicates whether it is already on or not.
The Osteoid cast can be 3D printed using a MakerBot Z18 or any 3D printer with 130 x 108 x 315 mm / 5.11 x 4.25 x 12.40 inches build volume, but the locking mechanism (whose position is determined algorithmically) and the LUPUS probe adapters are added afterwards.