Injured Bald Eagle Gets New 3-D Printed Beak 103
An anonymous reader writes "A bald eagle that lost its beak to a poacher's gun receives a 3-D printed beak prosthetic like a dental implant."
More (with pictures): "Mr Calvin, a founder of the Boise-based Kinetic Engineering Group, made a mold of Beauty's shattered upper mandible, laser-scanned it, fine-tuned it in a 3D modeling program, and created a prosthetic beak from a nylon-based polymer."
Re:Just when I thought (Score:5, Informative)
That 3D printing couldnt get any more awesome, something like this comes out of nowhere an proves that, yes, it can!
What implications does this hold for humans?aube we could get 3D printe false teeth with A faster turn-around than current moulding techniques.
I actually have such a tooth. I went into the dentist's office. He scanned my mouth with a 3d scanner, then used software to model the missing tooth. Then, the software sent the output to a milling machine, with a ceramic-on-metal blank. Total time, less than an hour from scanning my mouth to implanted tooth. I already had an implant grafted to my jawbone, so this was just the crown, but still, I was very impressed.
The prosthetic beak has been removed. (Score:2, Informative)
FTFA:
"Beauty continues to thrive under our care without her upper beak. The new growth pushed out the hardware which anchored the prosthetic beak."