The only ISO13485-certified medical implants additive manufacturing (AM, also called 3D printing) facility in Africa is the Central University of Technology's (CUT's) Centre for Rapid Prototyping and Manufacturing, or CRPM for short. (CUT is located in Bloemfontein.)

"Naturally, our focus is on medical product development, but we are also active in other sectors, including automotive and aerospace," explains CRPM director Gerrie Booysen. "We've been going for 21 years now. We started with pre-planning medical models in 1999, but the first actual implant was done in 2009."

Perhaps ironically, the first South African developed and made medical implant went into a patient in the UK. At that time, South African hospitals were still somewhat uncertain about AM produced titanium implants, whereas their British counterparts had already had some experience with them. This particular implant was developed in a joint project between the CRPM, the University of Wales (which provided the design) and a Welsh hospital.

"Today, we do a mixture of generic medical implant manufacturing and patient-specific, load-bearing complex implants, each of which is a one-off," he reports. "Generic items include spinal cages, which we manufacture in the hundreds. We are a subcontractor in this business, which helps keep our expensive AM machines commercially viable."

"For the future, a Department of Science and Technology (DST) Chair in Innovation and Commercialisation of AM has recently been created at CUT, with the support of the Department of Science and Technology and Merseta," he points out. "One of the functions of the new DST Chair is to help create an AM commercialisation and innovation vision for the future of the Centre and of AM in the country as a whole."

The CRPM currently has ten AM machines, making it one of the best equipped AM centres in the southern hemisphere. In addition to developing medical devices, including implants and prostheses, it undertakes rapid prototyping, rapid tooling and rapid manufacturing.

Booysen made a presentation to the 2018 conference of the Rapid Product Development Association of South Africa, in Johannesburg, which ended on Friday.