It all began when one of our friends and Co-Founders, Mao, fell during a mountain climbing expedition. While he was not seriously injured, he still fractured his arm and had to wear a fibreglass cast to recover.

If you have ever been in a cast, the ordeal would likely be etched in your mind regardless of how long ago you had to wear one. Having the natural movement of your limb removed and the need to avoid water contact while lugging around over one kilogram affixed to you already makes wearing a cast a difficult experience for anyone. And to make matters worse, there is constant itchiness, pervasive sweatiness, and festering odour lingering under your cast through it all.

His negative experience with wearing a cast eventually led to the birth of Castomize, where we are using 4D printing to create orthopaedic casts and splints of the future, which will revolutionise the current casting and splinting space for both patients and doctors.

What exactly is 4D printing?

4D printing is a concept which would be new to most people, but it is really similar to 3D printing. According to Sculpteo.com, 4D printing is the process through which a 3D printed object transforms itself into another structure over the influence of external energy input such as temperature, light or other environmental stimuli.

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Even as a pre-revenue SUTD spin-off specialising in 4D printing, Castomize has experienced rapid product development and received heavy market interest in its 4D printed orthopaedic casts. Currently, we are finalising our market-ready model for commercialisation, which we anticipate being completed by early 2023.

How did it begin

Before Castomize became an SUTD spin-off using 4D printing technology, we used to be a year-end student project back in 2017 with the goal of creating a new and improved cast free of all the problems cast-wearers were facing at the time using 3D printing techniques.

While the project did well as a student project, it became dormant for a few years as our team chose to focus on studies at the time, along with the fact that the idea was operationally challenging for us to execute, having to custom 3D-scan and print casts for every individual patient.

Fast-forward a few years to early 2022, our team decided to revisit the idea seriously after graduating from university. Armed with a new patent which was developed from one of our team member’s Master’s studies and a research grant from the National Research Foundation, we looked at executing and commercialising our idea for a modern orthopaedic cast which would revolutionise the casting and splinting space

We resumed our product development with much excitement and hope. Our first goal was to move away from custom 3D-printing each individual cast as much as possible. To this end, we began exploring using shape memory polymers and 4D-printing concepts.

Tapping on the grant we were given, we hired two research assistants and purchased the necessary equipment to begin our development. We also got incubated at the Temasek Launchpad programme, where we gained valuable exhibition opportunities and connections with mentors.

However, successfully creating a workable prototype proved to be more difficult than we thought, and we had no substantial progress in our product development for a good four months. This lack of progress, coupled with the mounting pressure of being fresh graduates with no income, began to cause frustration within our team and began creating friction amongst our members.

The friction finally reached a breaking point when our then-CTO announced that he was leaving the team to pursue a full-time job instead. The rest of the team thought the project would have no choice but to end abruptly without our key technology member leading the development.

The rest of the team, including the research assistants we brought in, sat down and had a long discussion about our direction going forward. We began transparently reviewing the development path we had taken so far and started to see other development areas and methods which we could have explored but were not seeing at the time, primarily due to the firm belief that there was only one way in which we could develop the product to a working stage, and the lack of open and honest communication.

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It was around this period that we got accepted into SMU’s Business Innovations Generator incubation programme and got access to their vast network of entrepreneurs and valuable start-up resources.

Besides receiving valuable guidance from their masterclasses, we were blessed to be connected by BIG to Dr Timothy Low, CEO of Farrer Park hospitals, who is a current advisor to our team with regard to our product development and market penetration strategy.

How is it going

With a clearer sense of direction, mentorship, and renewed confidence, we felt a rush of energy as we embarked on a new path of product development. One of the research assistants who we hired decided to step up and take on the role of CTO, and under his creativity and ingenuity, we have managed to create a fully functional 4D-printed cast, which is lighter and more comfortable for patients while being able to be perfectly moulded to any patient without customised 3D printing.

We are happy and proud that during the recent SWITCH 2022, our product, which we were demonstrating during the exhibition, received overwhelming interest from multiple parties, including individuals from venture capital, healthcare, and the military. Surprisingly, we have also received interest from FMCG companies to explore collaborating on interactive packaging.

Besides our progress in Singapore, we have also been gaining attention in Korea, where we have successfully achieved the top 30 for the K-Startup Grand Challenge 2022 out of over 2,653 start-ups and SMEs that applied for the programme. We are aiming to test our cast in Korea alongside Singapore, as these two nations are well-renowned for being advanced in medical technology.

In the long term, we are looking at exploring other uses of 4D printing, both in medical devices such as stents and respiratory aids, along with uses in other industries such as packaging and veterinary care.

Currently, Castomize is preparing to raise a Pre-Series A financing round, with the majority of raised funds going into manufacturing as well as medical compliance for us to capture the market quickly.

We are also looking to hire talents who have knowledge in biomedical engineering, materials science, and business development to join us in our mission to revolutionise orthopaedic casting with 4D printing technology.

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