Research on rapid manufacturing of CoCrMo alloy femoral component based on selective laser melting

Abstract

In order to meet the high suitability requirements of a femoral component in total knee arthroplasty (TKA), direct and rapid manufacturing of customized CoCrMo alloy femoral components by selective laser melting (SLM) was studied in this paper. When directly manufacturing CoCrMo alloy femoral component by SLM, the processability of CoCrMo alloy is an important factor in successful manufacturing and was firstly analysed in this paper, including the optimizing process for high density and high mechanical properties. Then the femoral component designed to meet the requirement of customized, the display and corresponding supports were discussed to achieve less production time and cost. At last, accuracy of femoral components directly manufactured by SLM was obtained by a contrastive detection method between a 3D scan model of manufactured customized femoral component and designed digital 3D model. The results show that a customized total knee replacement femoral component can be processed with high efficiency and high quality by the direct SLM manufacturing method. This study provides an important method for customized implant rapidly manufactured by SLM.