Selected from the archive for the 3D Printed Parts collection — a quick, visual way into the topic before you go deeper.
Fripp Design and Research of the United Kingdom has been churning out as many as 150 prosthetic eyes per hour, thanks to 3D printing, which is multiple times faster than traditional production of prosthetic eyes that uses handpainting. The 3D-printed prosthetic eyes must go through a process before becoming a final product. First, the image is digitally designed. Then, it is "overlayed into 3D form; the components are printed from powder in color using a machine, and the form is encased in resin." The company is facing difficulty because certain customers want customized irises for their prosthetic eyes, which are complicated and time-consuming to produce. The eyes produced by Fripp have intricate detail, with blood vessels and eye color details accounted for. But in case selling prosthetic eyes doesn't work, once the 3D-printed ones go on the market, Fripp can focus more on its other projects. One of these is Fripp's plan to provide facial prosthesis by first 3D scanning a user's facial features and designing a prosthetic addition that would fit to the person's scanned face.