#5 PEDICLE SCREW FABRICATION SOLUTIONS

Описание: "Introductory Challenge: The Beginning of a Wonderful Journey to Conquer Medical Knowledge."
🎥 Vietnam in the early 2010s. The CNC industry was still limited. Five-axis or even 3+2-axis CNC machines were rare — almost none.
🎥 The Compassion and the Dream
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Võ Văn Thành was the one who carried within him a great compassion — “How can we locally manufacture medical instruments, especially the Pedicle Screw, so that more patients can have a chance at treatment?”
I felt that concern of his.
Even though I had never met him in person, I absorbed that pain — the kind of burden only a true healer could carry.

The Beginning of the Challenge
From that moment of empathy, I decided to move.
To use every bit of resource I had — to create, to improvise, to do whatever it took to ease a part of his struggle.

But challenges came one after another:
1️⃣ To machine accurately, I needed a 3D file — and that required a real instrument.
At that time, all surgical tools were supplied by foreign companies for each specific surgery, and were taken back afterward for sterilization.
That meant: getting a real sample for measurement was nearly impossible.
Dr. Võ Văn Thành, with his international reputation, somehow managed to borrow a complete instrument set — but only for 48 hours.
And during that short window, I had to move fast.

2️⃣ Capturing the Shape – The 3D Reconstruction
With the real tool in hand, I used the CMM CONTURA G2 from CARL ZEISS to scan its curves and generate data for 3D modeling.
Once the data was captured, I started the 3D reconstruction.
Tools like pliers, clamps, or hooks were easy for someone who knew 3D design. But the Pedicle Screw was something else entirely —
Its threads had variable pitch and optimized profile to ensure that when screwed into bone, it wouldn’t break, wouldn’t loosen — it had to meet multiple medical standards.
Luckily, I was someone who combined three strengths:
** Hardware (CMM) + Software (3D) + Experience. **
That helped me conquer the 3D modeling of the Pedicle Screw.

3️⃣ The Hidden Preparations
Looking back, everything felt as if it had been arranged beforehand — little “setups” of fate:
In my R&D work, I had to design a bottle rotation system for Pantene’s oil bottles — both translating and spinning for label printing.
Then, a compression shaft with changing pitch and variable profile.
Then, reverse-engineering a screw shaft of a PPR pipe extrusion machine.
Each of those challenges unknowingly built up the experience I needed to finally conquer the 3D Pedicle Screw.
Material, Precision, and the Impossible
Once the 3D file was ready, came the next big question:
How to machine it precisely? How to work with titanium? And where to even get titanium?
Titanium source — thanks to good relationships with a Japanese partner, they supported me with titanium blanks for testing.
Tooling — Guhring provided specialized milling cutters for titanium.

But even with materials and tools, one major obstacle remained:
= How to machine a Pedicle Screw accurately without a 5-axis machine?
= We only had 3+2-axis milling and C-axis turning machines.
= Our CAM/CNC team tested many machining strategies within our limits, but none met the requirements.

So I gathered the team and asked a question that changed everything:
= “Can a CNC lathe with a C-axis follow a curve path, like how a milling machine follows curves for engraving?”
= They checked in Mastercam — and the answer was **YES**

That moment changed everything.
I took on the job of drawing the toolpath curves — (In Vietnamese we joke, “drawing the path for the deer to run.”)
And that’s how the team finally discovered the solution to machine the Pedicle Screw.
It was tough — the toolpath was a complex 3D helical motion. But after years of working with curves on CMM and mastering 3D modeling in Pro/E Wildfire, I didn’t flinch. I just kept going until we made it.

At that time, I still hadn’t met Dr. Thành in person.
** Legacy and Trust **
But true to his heart, Dr. Võ Văn Thành never stopped. He never gave up his calling to help patients, colleagues, and students.
From that came his vision — “To leave behind a personal legacy — the lifetime of knowledge and techniques gathered over 50 years of saving lives.”
And one day, he gave me — Dung.nguyenduy (D-Square) — a rare honor :
Assisted in creating surgical simulation videos for his lectures and international conferences.
Though we had never met face to face, he trusted me — a mechanical engineer with only one guiding philosophy:

The Invisible Connection
That invisible thread — between two people who had never met — a spine surgeon and a mechanical engineer — was where my journey into human knowledge truly began.
✨ A silent connection between two souls — one healing bodies, one shaping tools — together creating something that changed the course of spinal surgery in Vietnam.