Thinking Robot Studios is thinking big.

The Dartmouth 3D printing concern is developing a multi-faceted plant that promises to become a North American leader in the manufacture of medical implants. It has lined up $35 million in financing for the project and plans to develop a state-of-the-art advanced manufacturing facility that will house what may become the largest, concentration of diversified manufacturing equipment in North America. It is expected to eventually employ about 700 people and greatly improve the treatment of people with devastating injuries.

“What we’re doing is the most difficult corner of this industry,” said Thinking Robot CEO Kendall Joudrie in a recent interview. “Right now, the industry is tooled toward the generic manufacture of implants.”

Over a lengthy discussion, Joudrie and Director of Global Projects Gregor Ash outlined their plans to develop a plant that will have one of the most sophisticated and diversified manufacturing operations on the continent. It will include large-scale 3D printers operating 24 hours a day beside nano-printers that can make products too small for the eye to see.

At the time of the interview, Joudrie was close to deciding on and signing a development agreement for a Nova Scotia site on which the first 55,000-square-foot plant will be located. But that will just be the first phase and eventually Joudrie envisions a total factory space of 500,000 square feet and a huge range of equipment.

The selection of industrial-grade machines will include a dedicated metal printer, powder-based printers and resin-based printers as well as printers specializing in nano-technology. The printers will be housed in a facility with strict environmental control systems.

“We could be printing out a jet turbine blade right next to a heart pump at the same time,” said Ash. The primary purpose of the plant will be to produce customized implants for patients needing, for example, hip or knee replacements or those suffering from trauma or deformity. There will also be ancillary operations such as the prototype support and manufacture of prosthetics.

Up to now, Thinking Robot was best known for its work with Natasha Hope-Simpson, a young artist who lost a leg two years ago after being hit by a speeding car in her hometown of Wolfville, N.S. She has described the tragic event as creating a huge “artistic challenge,” for she wanted to design something beautiful to replace the lost leg. So she worked with Thinking Robot Studios to fulfill her vision of a stylized prosthetic limb.

Hope-Simpson now works  as a 3D designer with Thinking Robot, which is focusing largely on medical implants.

These implants are currently produced en masse and ordered by doctors with the hopes that a certain size will fit a patient. Thinking Robot wants to work with pairs of doctors and engineers through a practice already being used in Europe. The Thinking Robot team already has access to considerable expertise given that Dr. Vladislov Raikov of the Department of Orthopaedics and Trauma Surgery at Bethanien Hospital in Germany is a core medical collaborator. And Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer Jourdan Dakov, a Bulgarian engineer, recently immigrated to Nova Scotia to work more closely with the team.

Raikov and Dakov are experts in a procedure in which a surgeon uses 3D imaging to obtain a precise measurement of a joint, and an engineer uses advanced 3D printing equipment to quickly produce the implant. Joudrie said this method can speed up the procedure to about three days from the current four to six months, and it can do so at one-tenth of the current cost.

“This is where the integration of this technology comes in,” said Joudrie. “When you think about work place accidents or car crashes, the more specific we can be with the engineering, the better our chances are of returning that person to full productivity.”

The first market that Thinking Robot will target is revisions – that is, replacement implants that are needed after the first hip or knee replacement wears out. Revisions tend to be far more complicated than the first operation because the deterioration of the original implant can damage bone and muscles. The screws and components of the implant can break apart, and there can be debris in the surrounding tissue. It’s a critical and specialized market, and it’s expected to double in size in the next 15 years.

Thinking Robot contracted the American market research firm Dymedex to assess the market for these products, and the result was one of the highest market scores the firm had ever seen, said Ash. That helped convince the investors to come on board.

Joudrie said there are companies involved in producing implants now, but the major companies involved in the space are mass producing a generic product. “We’re shifting the paradigm,” he said.

As well as the direct economic benefit of developing a state-of-the-art manufacturing operation in the province, the principals believe the project will enhance research and development opportunities. They have already received interest from such institutions as Pennsylvania State University and University of Massachusetts at Lowell. And the facility should be good news for maker projects in Atlantic Canada because of the sophistication of the equipment they can use in prototyping.

“You have a plant here in Nova Scotia that has all the equipment to do all your prototyping,” said Joudrie. “Our goal is to actively support R&D as much as we can.”

Thinking Robot plans to have the initial factory operational in the spring of 2016, and its first product will be fairing systems – that is, the covers for prosthetic limbs.

Once the factory is operational, the company will begin to seek approval for its manufacturing processes from the healthcare regulators in the U.S., the European Union and Canada. Ash said the approval process should be completed by late 2016.

The company plans to have about 30 employees working at the plant in 2016, and increase the staffing to between 60 and 90 the following year.

Disclosure: The author’s daughter is working with Thinking Robot Studios.