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Materials Science in Additive Manufacturing 3D-Printed hip joints performance

During the procedure, the damaged joint of osteoarthritis 2. Materials and methods
patients is replaced with an artificial hip prosthesis,
which typically consists of several components, including 2.1. Experimental setup and fabrication
the acetabular cup, acetabular liner, femoral head, and In this study, the artificial hip joint design was created using
femoral stem. The acetabular cup, femoral head, and Fusion 360 software (Autodesk, Inc., United States) based
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femoral stem are generally fabricated from metal alloys, on the previous research design conducted by Ishihara.
while the acetabular liner is composed of a polymer Figure 1 shows the design created with the software.
material. 3 The fabrication of prostheses began with the preparation
Casting is the conventional manufacturing process for of composite materials. The composite materials were
artificial hip joint components such as the femoral stem prepared by mixing photopolymer resin and TiO
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and femoral head. Among the various casting methods, nanoparticles (Jiangsu Xfnano Materials Tech Co., Ltd.,
investment casting is widely used due to its ability to China). The photopolymer resin used was a dental resin-
produce components in large quantities with uniform type photopolymer resin (Esun Dental Model Resin,
dimensions, complex geometries, and good surface Shenzhen Esun Industrial Co., Ltd., China). Dental resin
finishes. However, the demand for customized artificial was chosen because it is commonly used in the medical
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hip joints tailored to individual patient anatomy is field, namely, dental care and repair by dentists. Three
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increasing. Conventional casting methods are considered variations of TiO concentration (1%, 3%, and 5% weight)
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ineffective for this purpose because customized implants were added to the resin. The materials were measured using
require patient-specific dimensions, making casting less a digital scale (TN-Series, TN Lab, USA) with a capacity of
efficient in terms of production time and costs. Additive 100 g and an accuracy of 0.001 g. The composite materials
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manufacturing technology, also known as 3D printing, were then mixed using a magnetic stirrer (MSH-A, Daihan,
has emerged to fabricate parts with complex designs, South Korea) for 30 minu, followed by an ultrasonic mixer
diverse geometries, and varying sizes with high precision (Krisbow 10250184, Indonesia) for 90 min for all variations.
without requiring modifications to the physical hardware The mixed TiO nanoparticle composite material was then
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of the printing machine. The fundamental mechanism used for the artificial hip joint printing process using 3D
of this technology involves converting a 3D computer- printing SLA with a 3D printer (Creality Halot Sky Cl-89
aided design model into a physical object by sequentially SLA, Shenzhen Creality 3D Technology Co., Ltd., China).
arranging layers of materials. There are several types of The setup parameters used were 70 s bottom exposure
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3D printing technology, including selective laser sintering, time, 4 s light off delay, 1 mm/s motor speed, 6 mm bottom
fused deposition modeling (FDM), selective laser melting lighting distance, and 3 s exposure time. Figure 2 shows the
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(SLM), and stereolithography (SLA). SLA 3D printing fabrication process of an artificial hip joint.
uses ultraviolet light to solidify a photopolymer resin into
precise, detailed objects.
Several studies have investigated the fabrication
of artificial hip joint components using 3D printing
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technology. For instance, Wang et al. investigated
the fabrication of acetabular cup components using
the SLM 3D printing method with Ti Al V alloy. In a
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separate study, Kang et al. fabricated acetabular cup
components from titanium alloy using the PBF 3D
printing method. In contrast, the current study focuses
on the fabrication of femoral stem and femoral head
components of artificial hip joints using the SLA 3D
printing method. The material used in this study was
a dental photopolymer resin reinforced with titanium
dioxide (TiO ) nanoparticles. Before conducting this
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research, the mechanical properties of the materials used
in this study had been obtained for the simulation test.
This research aims to evaluate the performance of the
fabricated artificial hip joint prostheses through finite
element analysis and experimental compression testing. Figure 1. The design and dimensions of the artificial hip joint prosthesis

Volume 4 Issue 3 (2025) 2 doi: 10.36922/MSAM025200032