Understanding wear behavior of 3D-Printed calcium phosphate-reinforced CoCrMo in biologically relevant media.

Recent advances in the processing of wear-resistant calcium-phosphate reinforced CoCrMo composites for articulating surface applications has necessitated further investigation of performance in biological conditions relevant to patient applications. To this end, CoCrMo composites containing calcium phosphate in the form of hydroxyapatite (HA) were manufactured to study the influence of the reinforcing phase on the tribofilm formation in biologically-relevant conditions. The CoCrMo-HA composites were processed using a laser engineered net shaping (LENS™) additive manufacturing (AM) system with three distinctive compositions: CoCrMo-0%HA, CoCrMo-1%HA, and CoCrMo-3%HA.

In situ reactive multi-material Ti6Al4V-calcium phosphate-nitride coatings for bio-tribological applications.

To reduce the wear related damage of medical grade Ti-6Al-4V alloy, laser engineered net shaping (LENS™) based in situ reactive multi-material additive manufacturing was employed to process a mixed coating of Ti-6Al-4V powder and calcium phosphate (CaP) in an oxygen free, nitrogen-argon environment. The resultant coatings were composite materials of titanium nitrides and calcium titanate in an α-Ti matrix. Hardness was increased by up to ~148% to 868 ± 9 HV as compared to the untreated Ti-6Al-4V substrate.

Additive manufacturing of biomaterials.

Biomaterials are used to engineer functional restoration of different tissues to improve human health and the quality of life. Biomaterials can be natural or synthetic. Additive manufacturing (AM) is a novel materials processing approach to create parts or prototypes layer-by-layer directly from a computer aided design (CAD) file.

Laser processed calcium phosphate reinforced CoCrMo for load-bearing applications: Processing and wear induced damage evaluation.

Unlabelled: To mitigate shortcomings in current biomedical CoCrMo alloy, composites of CoCrMo with calcium phosphate (CaP) were envisioned. CoCrMo alloy was reinforced with CaP to enhance the wear resistance of the alloy. A powder based direct energy additive manufacturing technique of Laser Engineered Net Shaping (LENS™) was used for processing of CoCrMo alloy with 1% and 3% (by weight) of CaP in the form of hydroxyapaptite.

In Vivo Response of Laser Processed Porous Titanium Implants for Load-Bearing Implants.

Applications of porous metallic implants to enhance osseointegration of load-bearing implants are increasing. In this work, porous titanium implants, with 25 vol.% porosity, were manufactured using Laser Engineered Net Shaping (LENS™) to measure the influence of porosity towards bone tissue integration in vivo.

Laser processing of in situ TiN/Ti composite coating on titanium.

Laser remelting of commercially pure titanium (CP-Ti) surface was done in a nitrogen rich inert atmosphere to form in situ TiN/Ti composite coating. Laser surface remelting was performed at two different laser powers of 425 W and 475 W. At each power, samples were fabricated with one or two laser scans.