Design and manufacturing of cranioplasty implants by 3-axis cnc milling

Although various techniques and materials have been used for making cranioplasty implants, personalized cranioplasty implants are high in cost because of expensive materials and production technology, long design and manufacturing time, and intensive labor use. This research was a part of our research project in ASEAN countries to investigate feasible technical solutions of minimizing the implant cost based on available production technologies in the region. The use of 3-axis CNC (Computer Numerical Control) milling techniques for making molds to fabricate PMMA implants was successfully investigated. With the development of a design support program bridging between Computer Aided Design (CAD) and Medical Image Processing (MIP) system, the time for geometrical modeling of implants and molds was reduced to half a day. The machining time to complete a mold was about 5 to 6 hours; and it took maximal 2 hours to fabricate an implant with self-curing PMMA and 3 and half hours for fabricating an implant with heat-curing PMMA. The cost of implants is acceptable for the ASEAN region.