A novel 3D additive manufacturing machine to biodegradable stents

Biodegradable stents offer the potential to improve long-term patency rates by providing support just long enough for the artery to heal. However, design a biodegradable structure for an intended period of support is rather difficult. Nowadays in the stent industry the manufacture process par excellence is the laser micro cutting. Nevertheless in the case of polymeric stents, the 3D additive manufacturing techniques could be a more economical solution. This work aim to design and implement a novel 3D Additive Manufacturing Machine to Biodegradable Stent Manufacture. The effects of nozzle temperature, fluid flow, and printing speed over the polycaprolactone stent's precision is studied. Results have shown the strong influence of temperature and flow rate over the printing precision. Printing speed did not had a clear tendency. The results allow us to believe that the novel technology presented in this paper will be an interesting future research line. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.