Development of Bio Materials for 3-Dimensional Printing - Research Paper Example

Prototyping Procedures In general, rapid prototyping (RP) is defined as the process of building or fabrication a physical part, layer by layer directly from its 3-dimensional computer aided design model (Choi and Samavedam, 2001). RP is also known in another term such as layer manufacturing, direct CAD manufacturing, solid freeform fabrication and rapid prototyping and manufacturing (RPM). From these several terms for RP it can be drawn that its basic principle is actually “additive manufacturing.

” It is because the 3D object is being formed by building layer by layer through adding, depositing or solidifying one or more materials in a horizontal layer-wise process (Heynick and Stotz, 2006). Lam et al (2002) described the rapid prototyping (RP) as “the process of creating three dimensional (3D) objects through repetitive deposition and processing of material layers using computer-controlled equipment … based on the 2D cross-sectional data obtained from slicing a computer-aided design (CAD) model,” (49). .  The whole model is completed by printing successive 2D profiles on a fresh layer of powder.

The profiles of each layer are joined using the printed binder and completed after the removal of the unbound powder and this has been used extensively for the fabrication of drug delivery devices (Wu et al, 1996). Tissue engineers soon caught up and started using 3DP to design and fabricate scaffolds (Wu et al, 1996). Developments include the use of the technology combined with salt leaching technique to fabricate polymeric scaffolds using copolymers of polylactide-coglycolide (PLGA, 85L:15G) and a suitable solvent.

Cylindrical scaffolds (F O 8X7 mm) and managed to achieve interconnected porous channels of about 800 ?m and microporosities of 45–150 ?m by using salt leaching. They were able to attach large numbers of hepatocytes on the scaffolds. In a study that investigated cellular reactions to pore size and void fractions based on 3DP fabricated scaffolds, cell proliferation was observed on the scaffolds but varied between cell types and the experimental parameters. The scaffolds used in the experiment had varying pore sizes of 38–150 ?

m and void fractions 75% and 90% (Zeltinger et al, 2001). RP is far different from traditional fabrication because this technology is only possible through the aid of the computer which controls all the mechanical system in fabricating 3D objects. Traditional fabrication technique could include solvent casting, gas foaming, fiber bonding/ meshes, phase separation, melt molding, emulsion freeze drying, solution casting, and freeze drying.