Last weekend I visited the headquarters of LIMA LTO, a privately owned orthopaedic research, development and manufacturing company. The company is located near Udine in northern Italy and has a 60 year history of precision engineering. The company has acquired the technology to manufacture implants using Electron Beam Freeform Fabrication. This amazing process can turn titanium powder into a solid hip replacement cup. It was developed by NASA to allow the fabrication of spare parts in space. The hip sockets manufactured by LIMA can be used with all of the available bearing surfaces including Delta ceramic, metal and polyethylene and will be particularly useful when the bone quality is not great. I hope to use one of these sockets in the next few weeks and will update the blog accordingly.
