Rapid manufacturing with selective laser melting for robotic surgical tools: Design and process considerations

Additive manufacturing is a technology in constant evolution. It is able to produce objects otherwise either impractical or unfavorable for traditional manufacturing technologies, especially in relatively limited quantities. The advancement of Selective Laser Melting (SLM) has made it possible to manufacture functional, production-quality components directly from rapid prototyping for long-term use. This work studies the SLM process and identifies the optimal process parameters for the rapid manufacturing of a miniaturized robotic surgical instrument. The proposed robotic instrument has been designed to exploit the advantages of rapid manufacturing and rapid assembly, following a shift from large scale manufacturing of generalized surgical instruments to the production of small batches of patient or procedure-specific.