TY - JOUR

T1 - A Six Degree of Freedom Extrusion Bioprinter

AU - Budde, Leon

AU - Ihler, Sontje

AU - Spindeldreier, Svenja

AU - Lücking, Tobias

AU - Meyer, Tim

AU - Zimmermann, Wolfram-Hubertus

AU - Bodenschatz, Eberhard

N1 - Funding Information: We acknowledge support by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) under Grant No. VDI 161L0250D (IndiHeart) and the German Center for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK) under Grant No. 81X2300173.

PY - 2022/9/2

Y1 - 2022/9/2

N2 - Motivated by a high demand, the research interest in personalized artificial tissues is steadily increasing. Combining knowledge of additive manufacturing and tissue engineering, the research field of 3D bioprinting emerged. This work presents a six-degree-of-freedom mechanically actuated extrusion bioprinter within a sterile working environment. The system is based on an off-the-shelf robot arm and a custom modular printhead end-effector. Advanced dexterity is achieved by the six degrees of freedom, enabling printing on non-planar surfaces. The printhead is designed for co-axial extrusion of three fluids but can easily be adapted for different number of fluids or different extrusion flows. The custom controller of the system is implemented within the Robot Operating System (ROS) framework and plans the trajectory based on a path given in a custom GCode dialect. Since the robot is clean-room-certified, can be sterilized using hydrogen peroxide steam, and is placed within a sterile hood, the setup enables working under sterile conditions.

AB - Motivated by a high demand, the research interest in personalized artificial tissues is steadily increasing. Combining knowledge of additive manufacturing and tissue engineering, the research field of 3D bioprinting emerged. This work presents a six-degree-of-freedom mechanically actuated extrusion bioprinter within a sterile working environment. The system is based on an off-the-shelf robot arm and a custom modular printhead end-effector. Advanced dexterity is achieved by the six degrees of freedom, enabling printing on non-planar surfaces. The printhead is designed for co-axial extrusion of three fluids but can easily be adapted for different number of fluids or different extrusion flows. The custom controller of the system is implemented within the Robot Operating System (ROS) framework and plans the trajectory based on a path given in a custom GCode dialect. Since the robot is clean-room-certified, can be sterilized using hydrogen peroxide steam, and is placed within a sterile hood, the setup enables working under sterile conditions.

KW - tissue engineering

KW - 3D printing

KW - Multi-Material Bioprinting

KW - 3D Printing

KW - Tissue Engineering

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85137669688&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1515/cdbme-2022-1036

DO - 10.1515/cdbme-2022-1036

M3 - Article

VL - 8

SP - 137

EP - 140

JO - Current Directions in Biomedical Engineering

JF - Current Directions in Biomedical Engineering

IS - 2

ER -