2.1 Creating a printable file
The model is based on cone-beam computed tomography scans (CBCT) from
the publicly available OpenEar library.7 First, the
file was translated to the Object file (OBJ) format, refined, and
translated to the Standard Triangle Language (STL)-format using the
software Meshlab.8 In order to fixate the model during
drilling, we added a block on the back of the model using SolidWorks
(Dassault Systemes, Vélizy-Villacoublay, France: Figure 1). Print job
generation was carried out in Ultimaker Cura (Ultimaker, Utrecht,
Netherlands), orienting the model so that the important areas were
orthogonal to the build plane, and facing upwards.