LithaBone HA 480 released by Lithoz

Lithoz, a global leader in ceramic additive manufacturing, through intensive cooperation with users of their previous bone substitute materials for ceramic 3D printing, has developed the new LithaBone HA 480 material. The material was developed to make the use of 3D printing for bone replacements more effective and more economically viable.

In medicine, ceramics are considered ideal materials for devices and implants due to their biocompatibility, low thermal conductivity, and lighter intrinsic weight. Most importantly, however, certain ceramics can be resorbed by the body, eliminating the risks connected to second surgeries. The wide range of bone structures in the body necessitates that ceramic materials for bone replacement fully cover this range and are biocompatible and resorbable. The planned interaction of the bone substitute material with adjacent bone and tissues depends on the optimized design of geometries which – accordingly – determines clinical success, as bone regrows along the material’s guide structures and the ceramic dissolves in the body.

Lithoz’s LithaBone HA 480 offers several major improvements, including a significantly higher wall thickness of 10mm – a key requirement for versatility reasons; more precise imaging accuracy of fine structures, with the material showing strongly reduced over polymerization with a simultaneously improved depth of cure, resulting in a simpler selection of build parameters and a significantly more stable manufacturing process; and a 10x longer shelf life. Parts are also significantly easier to clean – thanks to an improved binder composition.

KLS Martin, a pioneering German company in medical technology, has been an important user of 3D printed bone substitute implants since 2015. LithaBone HA 480 and the specification of the development goals were ultimately a direct outcome of invaluable customer feedback from this collaboration.

”We at KLS have been producing CMF implants for human use on our Lithoz CeraFab printer since 2015, with excellent results in terms of accuracy of fit, tolerability, and healing success. We already have had the chance to work with HA 480 and the results are outstanding: from mechanical properties over higher wall thickness to size and lattice structures, LithaBone HA 480 has convinced us of a considerable improvement compared to its predecessor,” said Adem Aksu, Director of Development for Biomaterials at KLS.