We’re starting with business news in today’s 3D Printing News Briefs, followed by news about an in-house center for engineering digital implants.We’ll end with research about thermal cloaking.Read on for all the details! Medtech Veteran Erica Rogers Now Leading LightForce Orthodontics Medtech veteran Erica Rogers joins LightForce to scale Generative Braces after 200,000 patients treated.
LightForce Orthodontics has reached a major commercial milestone, as more than 200,000 patients have been treated with its customized, 3D printed bracket system.On the heels of this news, the company announced that it has appointed Erica Rogers as its new CEO to lead LightForce through its next phase of commercial growth in the roughly $10 billion global orthodontics market.Rogers is a proven medtech veteran, with over 30 years of experience in medical technology leadership and commercializing new categories of care.
She was previously the CEO of Silk Road Medical, and led that company through its commercial expansion, initial public offering in 2019, and acquisition by Boston Scientific.Rogers has been on the LightForce board of directors for the past two years, working closely with the company’s investors, employees, leadership team, and customers, so this appointment to CEO is a “natural extension.” She will succeed LightForce founder Dr.Alfred Griffin as CEO, and work with him to lead the expansion of the company’s Generative Braces system, increase its manufacturing scale, and advance its metal and ceramic product portfolio.
Dr.Griffin will transition to chief product officer, but remain chairman of the board.“LightForce has reached an extraordinary moment in its journey.
The company has proved it can operate at commercial scale and earned the trust of orthodontists who are redefining how treatment is delivered,” Rogers said.“Our focus now is to scale that impact and advance orthodontics toward a new standard of care.” EOS, PTC, & Rambam Health Care Campus Establish Digital Implant Engineering Center A new initiative will see Israel’s Rambam Health Care Campus partnering with AM leader EOS and global software company PTC for 3D printed implants.In a joint collaboration, the three will establish an advanced Digital Implant Engineering Center at Rambam in Haifa, where a team of physicians and engineers will work to design, develop, and manufacture custom implants and medical devices using metal 3D printing.
Results have shown that patient-specific implants offer higher surgical accuracy and better anatomical fit, and fabricating them at the point of care can speed up treatment and shorten recovery, improve the collaboration between developers and surgeons, reduce the need for external suppliers, and help meet regulatory requirements for effectiveness and safety.This collaboration will leverage EOS’s industrial 3D printing technology, PTC’s Creo CAD solution, and Rambam’s clinical expertise as northern Israel’s only tertiary medical center.The partners will integrated advanced 3D-CAD design, manufacturing, validation, and quality within one unified framework to improve patient outcomes and personalized care.
Eventually, that framework could even assist other major hospitals in accessing tailored implant solutions.“Cutting-edge personalized implants require a connected digital foundation that ties together clinical need, design, manufacturability and workflow discipline.The Digital Engineering Center at Rambam demonstrates how intelligent digital engineering drives innovation,” said PTC’s Vice President Technology Dr.
Ronen Ben-Horin.“We see this development as a breakthrough for the health care industry and are proud our technology will play a central role.” Researchers Hide Omnidirectional Thermal Signature with 3D Printed Heat Cloak The 3D printed, hybrid aluminum-and-rubber cloaking device blocks an object’s thermal signature by guiding heat around it.Image: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Finally, a team of researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Technical University of Denmark have developed a 3D printed heat cloak that can disperse an object’s omnidirectional thermal signature.
The team says that previously developed heat cloaks only worked from a single direction, or in just two dimensions.As they say in their paper, their cloak is the first of its kind that is able to disguise heat in all directions.Using a highly conductive, hybrid material of rubber and aluminum, they made a lattice material that can be fabricated in any shape to hide an object from thermal detection.
Basically, these lattice structures make the objects invisible to infrared cameras because they guide heat around them, while also shielding them from surrounding heat.While they didn’t 3D print the lattice itself, they did make a 3D printed mold, which was then filled with the rubber-like material to cast the lattice.During testing, the device was placed between cold and hot regions to create a temperature gradient, and the researchers tracked how heat flowed through and around the cloak with an infrared camera.
It was a success, as the object appeared invisible to the camera, and the temperature under the cloak remained stable.It would be great for applications like heat management in data centers and protecting electronics.“We’ve shown that a true 3D omnidirectional thermal cloak is possible.
The next step is to make cloaks that don’t just hide and protect, but also actively manipulate heat in useful ways,” explained corresponding author Shelly Zhang, an associate professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, explained.The National Science Foundation, the Villum Foundation, and the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research supported this work.Subscribe to Our Email Newsletter Stay up-to-date on all the latest news from the 3D printing industry and receive information and offers from third party vendors.
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