An international team led by the IMDEA Materials Institute and the Technical University of Madrid (UPM) has developed a one-step 3D printing process for nickel-titanium (NiTi) alloy braided stents and has filed a patent for it. The results were published in npj Metamaterials, a Nature Portfolio journal, with researchers from MIT and the University of Galway participating; the technology also received a National James Dyson Award. The printed braided structure can be compressed to 50% of its original diameter while maintaining an elastic recovery rate above 90%. The design draws on textile structural principles: interwoven filaments slide past one another and change angle under load, allowing the overall structure to collapse and expand without concentrating stress on any single component. The team printed the braided stent directly in NiTi alloy, eliminating the step of weaving individual wires one by one. The as-printed surface is too rough for direct implantation, so the researchers used chemical etching plus electropolishing as post-processing, reducing each fiber's thickness by 47.7% and its cross-sectional area by 71.1%. The finished stent's chronic outward force (COF) is as low as one-fifth that of additively manufactured lattice structures, significantly reducing the risk of vascular injury and thrombosis. Traditional additively manufactured metal implants mostly use lattice structures made of rigid struts, relying on bending deformation to accommodate loads, which makes it difficult to balance large deformation with structural integrity. A braided architecture can readily accommodate the large deformation needed to compress into a catheter and deploy upon reaching the lesion, offering a viable path for direct printing of personalized implants and pushing NiTi powder and post-processing technologies further upstream in the additive medical device chain. Value for powder buyers: (1) Pay attention to batch consistency and superelastic performance of NiTi alloy powders; such braided stents are highly sensitive to the phase transformation behavior of the raw material. (2) Assess whether suppliers have supporting chemical etching and electropolishing post-processing capabilities, as surface treatment directly determines fiber dimensional accuracy. (3) Secure stable supplies of medical-grade fine-particle NiTi powder in advance; the scaling up of personalized stents will drive demand for small-batch, high-purity purchases.