Design and Fabrication of Bone Tissue Engineering Scaffolds via Rapid Prototyping and CAD

It is an important aspect that rapid prototyping technique can be used into tissue engineering. Biomimetic porous scaffolds made of calcium phosphate mineral are promising structures to develop bone substitute. Bone tissue engineering scaffold characteristics and properties are often considered to be critical factors in their design and fabrication. In this paper according to their demand, some scaffolds were introduced and designed with Computer Aided Design (CAD) software. In order to fabricate the scaffolds, biomaterials, β-tricalcium phosphate (β-TCP), and polymeric blends were used on a selective laser sintering (SLS) system, a kind of rapid prototyping machine, to produce specimens. Then the specimens were treated by high temperature to assess their suitability on SLS processing. © 2007 The Chinese Society of Rare Earths.