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US Military Working On 3D Printing Exact Replicas of Bones & Limbs
ErnieKey writes The U.S. military is working with technology that will allow them to create exact virtual replicas of their soldiers. In case of an injury, these replicas could be used to 3D print exact medical models for rebuilding the injured patient's body and even exact replica implants. Could we all one day soon have virtual backups of ourselves that we can access and have new body parts 3D printed on demand?
It will look so much like the real McCoy, they will be able to use it in the next Star Trek film
Bones and hard tissues = easy. Vessels, nerves, supporting tissue = nigh impossible. If technology ever got to the point where we could do this, we wouldn't be using soldiers to do our fighting.
Have seen a few cranial reconstruction implants made from MRI/CT to replace cranial defects from trauma and cancer etc. Amazing technology for sure. Beats the alternative by a huge margin. Doing a MRI of a soldiers body at induction might be a good resource when bad things happen? We need to stand behind our soldiers that go into harms way, in the many ways ...
Time for a new Political party in the US (or two!) One is off the rails Other cant pony up a leader.
The Island
Someone keeps swiping all the Scarlett Johansson spare parts to build their own copy.
Have gnu, will travel.
The entire premise is ridiculous. The *bone* part isn't important. You can make a perfectly cromulent 'bone' with titanium pieces parts. The BIG issue is attaching the muscles and getting them to work, reattaching the nerves and blood vessels that presumably went missing when the IED popped off. Just filling up an arm or leg with a static printed / milled / molded whatever is going to be OK only if you are laying out a corpse for viewing.
You are much better off spending the time and money to figure out how to regenerate everything. Of course, that's orders or magnitude harder than 3D printing something that low end factories in India have been churning out for centuries (anatomically correct skeletons, no not THAT anatomically correct).
This is getting silly.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Is this the same military which decided that armor was too expensive for humvee's, and that body armor was too expensive for soldiers?
(It's a great idea, I just wonder how they'd ever pull it off.. an ounce of Kevlar is apparently NOT cheaper than a pound of 3d printed skeleton.)
And thus WWIII was lost due to a Hewlett Packard printer cartridge that reported itself empty when it was still half full....
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Yes. It really is scary seeing a soldier run towards you waving bones in the air. Obviously, he's finished with that person and looking for his next meal.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
I have found this humerus!