Rio Paralympics 2016 – Looking For Medals Due To 3D Printing

Canoeing and Surfing: two Italian Athletes at the Paralympics and Isa World Adaptive Surfing Championship. Prosthesis and Braces 3D printed with a DeltaWASP by Marco Avaro – Biomedical Engineer.

Veronica Yoko Plebani is ready for Rio Paralympics. Fabrizio Passetti is preparing for the ISA World Adaptive Surfing Championship in La Jolla – California. They are two Italian Athletes with a rich palmares of trophies and success. They have in common that They use Prosthesis 3D printed by Marco Avaro, Biomedical Engineer who is part of the WASPmedical team. He works with a DeltaWASP 40 70 and three DeltaWASP 20 40. Veronica is a canoeist and Fabrizio a Surfer.

“I’ve made a hand brace for Veronica” – says Avaro –”Fabrizio instead needs a carbon fiber prosthesis for high-level performance in extreme conditions.”

They are enthusiastic about results and they embody the extraordinary results we can obtain with 3D printing.
At the Orthopedic – Lab “Del Bene Fabio” in Trieste, the Italian Engineer indefatigably works with his DeltaWASP Printers realizing more and more sophisticated prosthesis.

“This work is based on using high-quality filaments, produced by TreeD Filaments, and the fast and accurate printers manufactured by WASP. Today the 3D printing has become extremely accurate and sophisticated. We’re printing objects with tolerances of 0,2 mm.”

It’s important to understand that a Prosthesis is a customized medical device must respect regulations and needs a medical prescription. Many reliability tests have been conducted. Filaments have been certificated and now we’are writing specifications.

We’ve builded a good relationship with Marco Avaro. In this period he is working with a new Extrusion System. He is experimenting the new Full Metal Extruder and he is very enthusiastic:

“Its peculiarity is to homogenize prints, making a strong and tenacious product. I’m very satisfied – says Avaro – it’s a bulldog”.