Assoc. Prof. Boonrat Lohwongwatana, Department of Metallurgical Engineering, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand, and CEO and Co-founder of Meticuly.

Overview of a 5-year journey starting from fundamental metallurgical and materials research on titanium 3D printing using Selective Laser Melting (SLM), in-situ biological cellular responses on materials, animal studies, cadaveric studies, finite element analysis on implant functionality, cyclical and range-of-motion bio-mechanics tests, human clinical investigations, and ultimately to achieving the USFDA 510(k) approval leading to adoption in 700+ human clinical cases in Asia. The talk then shifts into current metallurgical challenges in additive manufacturing, such as how to achieve superior as-printed properties which require significant improvements on laser melting parameters and melt-pool strategies that include simultaneous heat treatment, in-situ localised vitrification for glass forming alloy compositions, and data-driven manufacturing, such as on-the-fly analysis of layer-by-layer visual and thermal information that would predict the validity of the implant during production. Towards the end, the floor is opened to entrepreneurial and spin-off discussions on how the aforementioned scientific and technological steps were financially tied with fundraising steps (seed, series-A and series-B rounds). Research and testing for real world application in this case were extremely costly. It became necessary and strategic to execute them in stages with commercial milestones that were palatable to investors and de-risked the enterprise.

For more information on attending this talk:  http://talks.cam.ac.uk/show/index/98965