Combining technology with resources and innovation is the underpinning of a new innovation center in Silicon Valley. On Dec. 12, PrinterPrezz Inc., a company combining metal 3D printing, nanotechnologies and surgical expertise to design and manufacture next-generation medical devices, announced the opening of its first Innovation Center in Silicon Valley. The center will employ a multi-disciplinary team of medical doctors, engineers, and materials scientists.
“3D printing has the potential to revolutionize how the world thinks about developing advanced medical devices, but in the current ecosystem, it takes too long to go from concept to product,” said Shri Shetty, CEO of PrinterPrezz. “By combining proven metal 3D printing technologies with our proprietary nanotechnology post-processing, we can further enhance new medical devices to improve durability, strength, and bone-in-growth while reducing the potential for infection, for example. From surgeons seeking new technologies to manufacturers needing scale, to patients hoping for speedy functional recoveries, PrinterPrezz’s Medifacturing framework solves challenges in quality, cost, and time.”
The center, based in Fremont, Calif., provides medical device digital design services with clinicians, engineers and materials scientists. It also includes access to an open innovation environment featuring a broad set of software, scanners and hardware to optimize 3D print design and prototyping for a variety of applications, from implants to medical devices, surgical aids and prosthetics.
With collaboration agreements to co-locate UCSF Surgical Innovations and other innovators onsite at the center, PrinterPrezz works with teams of researchers and university hospitals to productize their intellectual property (IP) and develop additional manufacturing and product IP.
In addition to the digital design services for medical devices, PrinterPrezz provides a complete additive manufacturing solution which includes multiple onsite powder-bed metal 3D printers capable of printing in materials such as titanium and stainless steel, as well as a suite of proprietary nanotechnologies including nano-metrology, nano-coating and nano-etching to enhance device performance.
“We support innovators at every level, from the individual clinician all the way to multinational medical device companies,” said Dr. Alan Dang, co-founder and chief medical officer of PrinterPrezz and board-certified orthopedic spine surgeon. “Some are looking to develop an initial prototype from a napkin sketch while others are already in production and need additional manufacturing capacity.”
