3D-printing technologies have greatly influenced the field of fabrication of medical devices. In particular, Fused Deposition Modeling 3D printing has emerged as one the most popular and most promising technologies for fabricating upper-limb prostheses. Over the last years, a variety of types and designs of 3D-printed hand prostheses have been created and are commercially available. However, there are no standards or established procedures for testing these devices. Available information regarding their long-term performance and functionality is very limited. This paper presents a case study of mechanical testing methods applied to a specific design of an upper-limb prosthesis. The device and its subassemblies were subjected to flexion test in hyperextension and abduction conditions, fatigue/wear test, and tensile test. The experimental results are presented and examined. Testing procedures, adaptations and recommendations are described and discussed to demonstrate ways of generating reliable data that serve for comparison among different hand prostheses designs.

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Novel additive manufacturing techniques are revolutionizing fields of industry providing more dimensions to control and the versatility of fabricating multi-material products. Medical applications hold great promise to manufacture constructs of mixed biologically compatible materials together with functional cells and tissues. We reviewed technologies and promising developments nurturing innovation of physiologically relevant models to study safety of chemicals that are hard to reproduce in current models, or diseases for which there are no models available. Extrusion-, inkjet-and laser-assisted bioprinting are the most used techniques. Hydrogels as constituents of bioinks and biomaterial inks are the most versatile materials to recreate physiological and pathophysiological microenvironments. The highlighted bioprinted models were chosen because they guarantee post-printing cellular viability while maintaining desirable mechanical properties of their constitutive bioinks or biomaterial inks to ensure their printability. Bioprinting is being readily adopted to overcome ethical concerns of in vivo models and improve the automation, reproducibility, geometry stability of traditional in vitro models. The challenges for advancing the technological level readiness of bioprinting require overcoming heterogeneity, microstructural complexity, dynamism and integration with other models, to generate multi-organ platforms that can inform about biological responses to chemical exposure, disease development and efficacy of novel therapies.