Characterisations of microstructure and residual stress in a customised cranial implant produced by Additive Manufacturing from commercially pure (CP) titanium

Additive manufacturing (AM) is a promising alternative technique to traditional forging and forming processes. Owing to its versatility in making complex parts, AM is an attractive technique for medical applications and hence of a great interest for both engineers and physicians. This is primarily because a 3D model of a part with required dimensions and geometry can be made considering fine details of a patient’s anatomy and specifics of surgery. Given the level of maturity of the traditional manufacturing processes, there are still areas to be improved to make the manufacturing more efficient and cost effective, for example by using AM instead. Characterisation of the final material is very important to understand the gain.
The objective of this work is to obtain detailed knowledge of microstructure, mechanical properties, and residual stress (RS) distribution in custom made craniofacial implant produced by AM (Fig.1). For these analyses, electron backscattered diffraction (EBSD), optical microscopy, XRD, hole-drilling based on electronic speckle pattern interferometry (ESPI), micro-hardness tester as well as GOM ATOS were used.