If you want to try doing 3D bioprinting at home or at a budget-strapped lab, commercial devices that only start at $10,000 may be out of reach. But researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have now published a series of instructions, as part of a study in Elsevier’s journal HardwareX, that let you turn a cheap consumer 3D printer into a high quality bioprinter that rivals many of the commercial devices. Their approach lets you build a bioprinter for under $500 that has combines precision with being able to work on large scale applications.
The open source instructions essentially focus on how to attach a large-volume syringe extruder to replace the head of just about any common fused deposition modeling 3D printer that uses plastic strings as the construction material.
The team so far used the device to print using alginate, which is frequently used in bioprinting applications. They also tried their own unique, and well named, Freeform Reversible Embedding of Suspended Hydrogels (FRESH) technique.
Here’s a Carnegie Mellon video about the new bioprinter:
Study in journal HardwareX: Large volume syringe pump extruder for desktop 3D printers…
Related: 3D Printed Cardiac Components
Via: Carnegie Mellon