Fabrication of magnesium ecap based maxillary miniplate-typed implant through the method of micro forming

Research and study on a degradable implant for bone fracture fixation has received great attention. This had to do with a problem, which in some cases, require doctors to do re-surgery to remove the implant from the patient after the fractured bone was healed. The removal surgery could cause several problems, such as the need for another recovery period and the high cost of the removal surgery itself. Several methods are developed to control degradation rate to match with healing rate. One of such method is the grain refinement technique using severe plastic deformation. In this paper, a study of fabrication of a miniplate implant for maxillofacial region using magnesium which passed severe plastic deformation using Equal Channel Angular Pressing (ECAP) was performed. The micro-forming fabrication method is selected to form the miniplate. It is shown that the accuracy precision of the process was achieved with a reasonable result compare to the design. The most crucial part form miniplate design is the hole which shows low variation in diameter, 1.43 %. It shows that the method of micro-forming has great potential to fabricate miniplate using magnesium ECAP. Further work is necessary to conduct finishing process on the miniplate.