X-rays and scanning technologies introduced the possibility of seeing these shapes, but it is generally accepted that many people cannot imagine, regardless of plans, elevations, drawings and text how an object would appear in a tangible three dimensional form.

The difficulties are even greater in the case of articulating parts. For this reason, Shawn Cherewick diversified his existing company, Protowerx Design Inc. (www.protowerx.com) in Langley, BC, and entered the medical market.

Protowerx began as a rapid prototype production shop. However, one evening about seven years ago, Cherewick was watching The Learning Channel and was fascinated to see a 5-axis CNC machine that could duplicate a truck just like his F-350 crew cab, with 0.005 in. tolerance. This began thoughts for a specialty business that could be built around the same technology. 

Fired by enthusiasm and convinced of a market, Cherewick began to realize that many disciplines within the medical profession could benefit from 3D printing, CNC machining’s cousin. Now, seven years later, Protowerx is creating simple to complex medical models to assist medical professionals from dentistry to general surgery. 

The human body is a composition of hard and soft parts, elastic parts, tubular parts and ball joints. All of this is generally understood, but when there is an anomaly in one particular area that affects the parts contiguous to it, the challenge is to understand it in all its dimensions and learn how best it can be managed or treated. 


Protowerx uses 3D printers from Z Corp. to produce medical models.

For example, recognizing a dentist’s difficulty in explaining the dysfunction of a particular malformation of the mandible (lower jaw), a suggestion was made that two dimensional x-ray images could be transposed to a medium that would allow the patient (and probably the dentist too) to understand exactly what had to be done and what processes would be required to do it. 

Protowerx has eased the challenge with a rapid model making service that enables the practitioner to fully examine the options for treatment in a time frame that was formerly not possible with traditional model making. Several methods of production were researched before leading to 3D printers from Z Corp. (www.zcorporation.com), and Sensable Freeform, a 3D design and modeling solution (www.sensable.com), that is designed to model complex organic shapes, including those found in the human body.

Typically, data is sent to Protowerx as a DICOM file. A file with a DCM extension refers to a Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine Format Bitmap file.

From that point the data is cleaned up – much like text is edited before going to press – and sculpted in Freeform to allow for the model to be revised or sectioned as needed for analysis, color or text added, or to add a base structure for display purposes. 

Freeform users model with a touch-enabled haptic stylus instead of a computer mouse, allowing the sculptor to literally feel what is being sculpted on screen. This is accomplished with force feedback, whereby the software and motors in the haptic device are programmed to create resistance to the user’s hand, so that it feels like the modeler is touching the object on the screen. 

The model is then printed on the Z Corp. 3D printer that uses layers of powder and binder to create a 3D object. In medical education, for example, Protowerx produced a three dimensional replica of a maxillofacial (jaws and face) model. It embodied all the physical characteristics of the subject and allowed students to study it in a manner that wouldn’t otherwise be possible – or permissible.

The potential for the technology and those that can apply it has far reaching benefits to medical science and education.

But receiving a 3D DICOM file and making it spring to life is not merely a matter of pressing buttons. Preparation, transformation, presentation and an understanding of the subject all require human skills – and skill is the fourth dimension that lies behind the success of Protowerx.