Additive manufacturing can be used for an extreme variety of products, it is used widely throughout the medical device industry. As most medical devices can be printed in FDM material without an issue, there is a small percentage of medical devices that need to be manufactured with sterilizable materials. Certain devices come into contact with patients' body tissues or fluids, making it absolutely necessary that these devices are made with materials that can be sterilized. Stratasys tested their materials using four different sterilization methods.
These four methods of sterilization are: autoclave, ethylene oxide, hydrogen peroxide, and gamma radiation. Over the next thirteen pages, we will be discussing the background on sterilization, the materials Stratasys tested, as well as the testing methods and results. The discussion will extend to which sterilization methods are best for each material. This test was facilitated by the University of Texas at El Paso, as well as Stratasys. The goal was to make 3D printing safer and more efficient for medical use, download the whitepaper to find out more.
