Despite the increasing use of 3D printing in orthopedic surgery, there is no established method for the validation of a printed bone model. A printing error could potentially lead to complications, especially when the model is used for surgery planning. We aimed to validate a series of 33 acetabular fractures with a novel method by detailed analysis of model errors.After applying a surface filter on both the patients model and the 3D printed model, a two-step registration consisting of landmark-based pre-registration and ICP-registration, was slightly varied and conducted 100 times, yielding a mean surface deviation and standard deviation for each model surface point.We furthermore showed that more than 30 random ICP-registration points lead to a sufficiently good registration, and that the variation of the pre-registration is small enough to guarantee a stable ICP registration result.Deviations caused by failed registration are unveiled by a large standard deviation of the 100 registration routines. For the fracture series, the mean surface deviation error between the printed model and the patient model was less than 1 mm (median = 0.7 mm; 95% CI = 0.68-0.72 mm). The largest errors were found in areas with remaining support structure material, on printbed-facing model sides and on abrasive surface regions. By visualizing the residual registration error, it was possible to clearly detect surface deviations and to quantify them.