Porous Ti6Al4V scaffold directly fabricating by rapid prototyping: preparation and in vitro experiment.

Three-dimensional (3D) fiber deposition (3DF), a rapid prototyping technology, was successfully directly applied to produce novel 3D porous Ti6Al4V scaffolds with fully interconnected porous networks and highly controllable porosity and pore size. A key feature of this technology is the 3D computer-controlled fiber depositing of Ti6Al4V slurry at room temperature to produce a scaffold, consisting of layers of directionally aligned Ti6Al4V fibers. In this study, the Ti6Al4V slurry was developed for the 3D fiber depositing process, and the parameters of 3D fiber depositing were optimized. The experimental results show how the parameters influence the structure of porous scaffold. The potential of this rapid prototyping 3DF system for fabricating 3D Ti6Al4V scaffolds with regular and reproducible architecture meeting the requirements of tissue engineering and orthopedic implants is demonstrated.