Fused Deposition Modeling
Fused Deposition Modeling ( FDM; German: Melting stratification ) refers to a manufacturing process from the area of rapid prototyping, with which a workpiece is constructed in layers of a meltable plastic. Machines for the FDM machines belong to the class of 3D printers.
This method is based on the liquefaction of a wire-shaped plastic or wax material by heating. During the subsequent cooling, the material solidifies. The material is applied by extrusion with a on the production level freely movable heating nozzle. The layer thicknesses depending on the application between 0.025 to 1.25 mm, the wall thickness of at least 0.2 mm. In the layered model production thus the individual layers into a complex part. Projecting parts can be produced by this method may only support structures made of cardboard, polystyrene or the like.
Base of the production is the computer-internal data model of the part as polygon mesh in example STL format ( STL interface ) or OBJ format.
The plastic is applied
Model almost finished
The end result - a model of the spine, which was created with data from the MRI.