It seems like 3D Printing has been everywhere lately. More and more often students, innovators and companies alike are finding new ways to implement this eclectic new feature into their lives – printing straight from the imagination. This has exciting impacts on the medical world, too; already many medical supplies and prosthetics have been created, for example. (Even animals are getting in on the possibilities: two wounded toucans recently received 3D-printed beaks!)
The exciting advancements have even made their way into the hearing aid industry. Since 3D printing allows for so much variability, most manufacturers use the mechanism to specially customize every aid to fit the wearer’s ear. The challenge is now trying to produce aids that can most effectively discriminate between different types of sounds and voices — something that may appear quite difficult to accomplish with a printer. But researchers in the U.S. have created a brand new “prototype that can tell the difference between three different voices speaking simultaneously with 97 percent accuracy.” And despite the smallness of today’s hearing aids, you can imagine how complex the inner workings of such aids must be. In fact, inside the printed hearing aid is a myriad of 3D-printed “tunnels . . . [and] hexagonal structures” that can tweak sound waves as they reach the device,” and “waveguides” determine the direction of sound.
The biggest obstacle in this fascinating new development is size; the creators must still find a way to reduce the size of the device, who explain that the large size enables “360 degrees of coverage.”
The image below gives a clearer idea of how this new hearing aid will work. Here’s hoping it gets finalized (in a smaller size) soon!
