3D printed porous stainless steel for potential use in medicine

3D printing technologies like Selective Laser Melting (SLM) or Electron Beam Melting (EBM) produce components of very complicated shapes from various kinds of materials. In this work a highly porous (porosity of almost 90 vol. %) stainless steel component was manufactured by SLM. The material was characterized in terms of structure, surface chemistry and mechanical properties. It was observed that mechanical properties of the material were similar to those of trabecular human bone. The tests realized in this work confirmed suitability of the porous material prepared by SLM for the use in medicine, for example, for scaffolds designed to repair bone defects.