This isn’t about perfect lab conditions or theoretical designs; it’s about practical additive manufacturing and lessons you can apply directly to your own parts.
Part(s): Surgical Cutting Guides
Industry: Medical
Printer: Formlabs Fuse 1+ 30W
Material: Nylon 12
Primary Requirements: Accurate fit, reliable performance
For this project, we were working on custom surgical cutting guides; basically, patient-specific tools that help surgeons make extremely precise bone cuts during procedures like fracture repair or osteotomies (bone realignment surgeries). The part files were provided by Formlabs and printed in our St. Paul TekCenter to be used as display parts for an upcoming medical-focused trade show.
The goal of surgical guides is simple: take a digital surgical plan and turn it into something physical that makes the surgery faster, safer for the patient, and more accurate. Before guides like this became more common, surgeons often had to rely on standardized tools and a lot of real-time measuring in the OR. That works, but it can be time-consuming and leaves more room for variability and mistakes during the procedure.
With all cutting guides, the following are non-negotiable:
• The guide must fit well with the patient’s anatomy
• The part needs to be sterilizable
• The cut slots and drill paths need to be dimensionally accurate
• The workflow needs to be fast enough for point-of-care use
This is an application where additive manufacturing shines. Every patient is different, so every guide should be uniquely tailored; something that would make traditional manufacturing cumbersome and inefficient. With 3D printing, you can have unlimited variability while achieving fast, precise, and repeatable results.
I felt the Formlabs Fuse 1+ 30w would be a great match for this build because SLS printing gives you:
• Functional, durable nylon parts
• The ability to print complex shapes without supports
• Consistency across builds
• The option to batch multiple guides at once
For hospitals or medical centers building these at the point of care, the combination of speed, accuracy, and in-house cost efficiency is unparalleled.
Nylon 12 was chosen because it strikes a balance between strength and accuracy, plus is sterilizable. It’s a practical material choice when you need performance, not just a prototype.
The best part about the Formlabs Fuse and SLS in general, is the lack of supports needed. This ensures the contact surfaces are clean and scar free, which is imperative when the perfect fit matters!
Tight tolerances around cut slots and drill holes
Nesting multiple guides (parts) into one build to maximize throughput
The main tradeoff here is surface finish vs. speed. Because SLS is a powder-based process, parts can have a slightly textured feel so, depending on the surgeons requirements, some guides may need light post-processing e.g., smoothing, polishing. Even with this step, SLS remains significantly faster and more flexible and traditional manufacturing methods.
Faster turnaround times (3 days for printing and post-processing) compared to outsourcing surgical guides using traditional manufacturing methods.
Cost Savings. Having direct access to additive can minimize external manufacturing disruptions, and reduce costly procedure time in the O.R.
Patient-precise geometry that's difficult to achieve using traditional manufacturing methods.
If you’re planning to print surgical cutting guides, always treat the bone‑contact surface as the critical surface. The guide is only as accurate as its fit, and SLS is especially valuable here because you can produce complex geometry without supports interfering with those contact surfaces.
Every part tells a story, and this is a great example of how additive manufacturing can simplify workflows, speed up timelines, and unlock designs that aren’t practical with traditional methods. If you’re working on a part and wondering whether additive manufacturing could be a good fit, or which technology or material makes the most sense, our Application Engineers are always happy to talk through it.