A dual nozzle 3D printing system for super soft composite hydrogels
Andi Dine,
Edward Bentley,
Loic A PoulmarcK,
Daniele Dini,
Antonio E. Forte,
Zhengchu Tan
Affiliations
Andi Dine
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2AZ, UK
Edward Bentley
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2AZ, UK
Loic A PoulmarcK
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2AZ, UK
Daniele Dini
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2AZ, UK
Antonio E. Forte
John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA; Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano, Milan 20133, Italy; Corresponding author at: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2AZ, UK.
Zhengchu Tan
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2AZ, UK; Corresponding author at: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2AZ, UK.
Due to their inability to sustain their own weight, 3D printing materials as soft as human tissues is challenging. Hereby we describe the development of an extrusion additive manufacturing (AM) machine able to 3D print super soft hydrogels with micro-scale precision. By designing and integrating new subsystems into a conventional extrusion-based 3D printer, we obtained hardware that encompasses a range of new capabilities. In particular, we integrated a heated dual nozzle extrusion system and a cooling platform in the new system. In addition, we altered the electronics and software of the 3D printer to ensure fully automatized procedures are delivered by the 3D printing device, and super-soft tissue mimicking parts are produced. With regards to the electronics, we added new devices to control the temperature of the extrusion system. As for the software, the firmware of the conventional 3D printer was changed and modified to allow for the flow rate control of the ink, thus eliminating overflows in sections of the printing path where the direction/speed changes sharply.
