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US 12,419,754 B2Granted
Joint implants having porous structures formed utilizing additive manufacturing and related systems and methods
AssigneeEncore Medical, L.P.
InventorsAlex Drew, Jeremy Borchert, John Green, Rachel Patel
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A medical implant which comprises a porous lattice is fabricated with additive manufacturing techniques such as direct metal laser sintering. A CAD model of the porous lattice is created by defining a trimming volume and merging some lattice elements with adjacent solid substrate.
Claims20
A method for fabricating an implant device comprising a porous lattice, the method comprising:
- creating, by a computing device, a model of the implant device comprising the porous lattice, the creating comprising:
- defining an initial lattice volume having a bounding surface for the implant device;
- populating the initial lattice volume with a plurality of seed points,
- populating the initial lattice volume with a plurality of nodes and struts using a Voronoi tessellation to divide the initial lattice volume into a plurality of 3-dimensional regions, thereby defining an initial lattice;
- defining a second volume within the initial lattice volume such that a trimming boundary is defined between the initial lattice volume and the second volume;
- removing struts and nodes, and portions thereof from the model that are located outside the trimming boundary;
- and
- fabricating the implant device comprising the porous lattice at least in part by exposing fusible material to a heating source according to the model.
5 more elements
A method for generating a fabrication model for an implant device comprising a porous lattice, the method comprising:
- creating, by a computing device, a model of the implant device comprising the porous lattice, the creating comprising:
- defining an initial lattice volume having a bounding surface for the implant device;
- populating the initial lattice volume with a plurality of seed points;
- populating the initial lattice volume with a plurality of nodes and struts using a Voronoi tessellation to divide the initial lattice volume into a plurality of 3-dimensional regions, thereby defining an initial lattice;
- defining a second volume within the initial lattice volume such that a trimming boundary is defined between the initial lattice volume and the second volume;
- and
- removing struts and nodes, and portions thereof from the model that are located outside the trimming boundary.
4 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.