Questions to consider before buying a 3D printer

[mike@aravind.org]

.......4) there is software that can convert mri/cat scans into printable 3d models. For things like eye sockets - that's currently your best option. .......

Again, a lot of useful advice. I really need the people back at the hospital in India to consider what you just written.

Regarding the one sentence I quoted above, after doing a search, I found this:

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-...-a-3D-printab/

This may or may not solve my initial thought, 3D printing a prosthetic eye to fit a patient's eye socket, but even if we continued with a manual process as we do now, this would give us a realistic scale replica of the patient's eye socket, so the prosthetic eye can be worked on with less inconvenience to the patient. ....but it seems to me that once this scan was converted to data, we could potentially print an eye that would fit correctly into this socket.

(This has nothing to do with the questions I'm involved in regarding scanning and printing, but it does show what is possible:
https://www.fastcompany.com/3023276/...-a-3-d-printer
.....which would make me think something like the Stratasys Mojo, or something similar, might be capable of this kind of result.)

[mike@aravind.org]

(To visualize what I'm working with, this YouTube video shows the structure into which the prosthetic eye will need to fit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKEA4p5k66U
I am not sure how much of this structure needs to be used to properly support a prosthetic eye. I will ask.)