3D printing and modeling in orthopedic surgery. Don't miss the boat!
Maker Faire Bay Area 2026
September 25th-27th
3D Printing and Modeling in Orthopedic Surgery: Don't Miss the Boat!
An X-ray is a shadow. The bone never appears on the film — only its silhouette does, and shadows can be deceiving. Even a CT scan, for all its detail, still asks you to reassemble a three-dimensional puzzle inside your own head.
Andy Grotting, an orthopedic sports medicine surgeon in San Diego, fixed that the way a maker would. He takes his patients' CT scans, converts them into 3D models, performs the operation virtually in Blender, then rehearses on a 3D print of the actual anatomy — so the hardest decisions are made before the first incision.
In this fast-moving 20 minutes you'll see the real cases: a dirt bike crash, an e-bike knee injury, a collarbone that healed crooked, a shoulder replacement no flat image could explain. You'll see how a scan becomes a mesh, how the mesh gets cleaned up and pulled apart piece by piece, and how it comes off the print bed as something you can turn over in your hands.
Then the best part — none of this requires a hospital budget or a background in engineering. The software is free and open-source. The printer costs under $300. The bone in his hand cost about a dollar fifty in filament. If you own a printer, or you're thinking about one, this is a look at what it can do and where the technology is going next.
Schedule
John Andrew Grotting MD
Andy Grotting is a maker and orthopedic sports medicine surgeon with Synergy Orthopedic Specialists in San Diego. His most common surgeries are for knee, shoulder, and hip injuries in athletes. He's a team doctor for the San Diego Gulls hockey club and San Diego Mesa College, and teaches the next generation of surgeons as faculty for the San Diego Arthroscopy and Sports Medicine Fellowship. Before starting his practice he trained at Georgetown, UMass, Kerlan-Jobe and spent a year doing trauma surgery in rural Kenya. Outside the operating room he's happiest with a welder, a 3D printer, a laser cutter, or a soldering iron, and he'll take any excuse to tinker. Most importantly, he is a dad and a soccer coach.
