Study of without blankholder drawing for individual titanium implant forming

Abstract

Titanium implant is widely utilized in repairing skull defects. The current technique used to produce implants is punch forming which is well developed in manufacturing, however, the traditional technique does have a serial problems in forming titanium implants such as time-consuming, complex process, low success rate. What is more, in the course of drawing the titanium dioxide layer on titanium implant surfaces will be destroyed. The properties of titanium dioxide are decisive for good contact with the surrounding tissues. In order to simplify the forming process of individual titanium mesh, to reduce the working hours and to protect the titanium dioxide layer on titanium implant surfaces, a without blankholder drawing method is brought forward in this paper. For the sake of ensuring the success rate of titanium mesh forming, the finite element method is introduced to simulate the feasibility of stamping system before machining stamping tools, and also the deformation contour of titanium implant is obtained to forecast forming result. And then a rapid prototyping technique is selected to manufacture the forming moulds of titanium implant. Finally, on a basis of finite element simulation results, an individual titanium implant instance is made by the moulds. And then the implant is successfully applied in the skull repair operation. The methods presented in this work guarantees not only the efficiency and success rate of individual titanium implant forming, but also the titanium dioxide layer on titanium implant surfaces. Accordingly, the method has a certain practical application value.