Downloads

Here are the 3D printable files, plus basic instructions for 3D printing.

More advanced users might be interested in using our OD models to print molds for casting silicone instead of directly printing dilators, but as this requires much more time, skills and materials, it only really makes sense for a larger scale of production.

Printing Instructions for Direct Use

As mentioned on the safety page, in a medical setting, dilators are made of soft materials such as silicone to reduce risks of perforations. In order to get closer to the bendability of silicone, it is important to use an elastic material such as TPU.

Even when using TPU, objects as thick as a dilator can easily become very resistant to any kind of deformation if the infill pattern is too dense. In our experiments, an infill of around 5% is both high-enough to prevent the dilator from getting squished by light lateral pressures and low-enough so that some degree of bendability remains.

With these parameters in mind, the production cost is around 1 or 2 eurodollars per dilator, roughly ten times less than a medical-grade silicone dilator.

TL;DR:

• TPU rather than PLA,
• Gyroid 5% infill with outer 2 walls.

Files

You can bulk-download a zip file with all the models, or just take the select few you need.

The increments from one size to the next are linear, with 2mm to the base and tip diameters and 6,5mm to the length.