3D-printed customized orbital implant templates can be used to press and trim conventional implantable materials with patient-specific contours and sizes for optimal orbital wall reconstruction. It is difficult to design an orbital implant that exactly matches the shape and surface of a blowout fracture site due to the unique 3D structure of the orbit. The traditional surgical method is to visually inspect the fracture site and use eye measurements to cut a two-dimensional orbital implant that corresponds to the anatomical structure of the fracture site. However, implants that do not fit the anatomical structure of a fracture site well can cause complications such as enophthalmos, diplopia and displacement of the implant.

3D printing technology has been extensively applied in the medical field, but the ability to replicate tissues that experience significant loads and undergo substantial deformation, such as the aorta, remains elusive. Therefore, this study proposed a method to imitate the mechanical characteristics of the aortic wall by 3D printing embedded patterns and combining two materials with different physical properties. First, we determined the mechanical properties of the selected base materials (Agilus and Dragonskin 30) and pattern materials (VeroCyan and TPU 95A) and performed tensile testing. Three patterns were designed and embedded in printed Agilus–VeroCyan and Dragonskin 30–TPU 95A specimens. Tensile tests were then performed on the printed specimens, and the stress-strain curves were evaluated. The samples with one of the two tested orthotropic patterns exceeded the tensile strength and strain properties of a human aorta. Specifically, a tensile strength of 2.15 ± 0.15 MPa and strain at breaking of 3.18 ± 0.05 mm/mm were measured in the study; the human aorta is considered to have tensile strength and strain at breaking of 2.0–3.0 MPa and 2.0–2.3 mm/mm, respectively. These findings indicate the potential for developing more representative aortic phantoms based on the approach in this study.