Posted on 05/21/2018 10:25:43 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Erik Gatenholm first saw a 3D bioprinter in early 2015. His father, Paul, a professor in chemistry and biopolymer technology at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, had bought one for his department. It cost somewhere in the region of $200,000. “My father was like, ‘This thing can print human organs,’” Gatenholm recalls, still awestruck. “I said, ‘Bulls#*+!’ Then it printed a little piece of cartilage. It wasn’t cartilage, but it was like, this could be cartilage. That was the moment when it was like, ‘This is frickin’ cool!’”
Gatenholm, who had long owned a regular 3D printer, decided then that he wanted to do something in 3D bioprinting. His language might be a bit Bill & Ted – he grew up between Sweden and the US, where his father is a visiting professor – but his intent and ambitions are very serious. Gatenholm had started his first biotech company aged 18 and he realised that if this machine had the potential to print organs, like his father said, then it had the potential to radically change the world of medicine.
There is a global shortage of organs available for lifesaving transplants. In the UK, for example, you can now expect to wait an average of 944 days – more than two-and-a-half years – for a kidney transplant on the NHS. There’s a similar shortage of liver, lungs and other organs. The lack of transplant tissues is estimated to be the leading cause of death in America. Around 900,000 deaths a year, or around one-third of all deaths in the US, could be prevented or delayed by organ or engineered tissue transplants. The demand, simply, is endless....
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Best to get an organ with your own DNA in it.
Or a scaffold that could eventually become an organ.
I design 3-D objects using modelling software and print them on our printer. But these objects are just complex shapes that are modelled to the correct dimensions. Even so there are a lot of factors that must be considered when designing an object to print. It is hard to imagine the complexity that must be involved in modeling an organic structure. That is something way beyond just a shape layered out in whatever your filament is made of.
The 3-D printer has turned out to be one of the more useful tools that I own. I highly recommend purchasing one.
A 3d printer is on the shortlist.
Whoa. The Crazy Cat Lady implications are mind boggling. DYI Crazy Cat Lady Starter Kits! One of everything!
“A 3d printer is on the shortlist.”
I still can’t figure out what they are.
The excellent & highly recommended TV series “Limitless” did an episode on this topic.
Episode #19: “A Dog’s Breakfast”
I look at it as “coming thing”.
“Regenerative Medicine” has long been the holy grail as far as things on Doctors’ wish lists. The implications are staggering if we could master it. The blind would be able to see and the lame walk. All sorts of horrible injuries could be repaired. Worn out, diseased and damaged organs could simply be replaced. We’ve taken a few steps on the toward developing some replacement organs but we have a long way to go.
One thing this doesn’t note....if we could 3D print human organs we could also produce 3D printed meat. That doesn’t sound like a big deal but it would be huge if we could do it at a competitive price. Raising livestock is both financially expensive and environmentally expensive. Think of all the water used, all the feed, all the feces generated etc etc.
I’d call this technology, nuclear fusion and a cheap way to desalinate water the 3 most desirable inventions humanity could come up with in the next century.
Why would it not?? It ought not be a problem to use the prospective host's own cells. We already know how to extract and multiply many different types of body cells. Such multiplication is already done routinely for stem cells.
The "framework" the cells would be printed into would either be a bio-compatible or designed to dissolve after some time frame.
I'm waiting on one that will both 3-D print and CNC machine. There have been a number of Kickstarter projects aimed in that direction, but I haven't seen one yet that will make me cough up the dough.
I still can’t figure out what they are.
The third dimension is made up of layers of “ink”. The “ink” is the material of the device or whatever you are making. Visualize yourself aiming a hose spraying hardening foam material. You are a 3D printer.
OK, but how does it make ORGANS...you take blood, cells, etc from something else and design/spray it out?
A dual purpose machine was something that I was interested in as well. The problem is that the design parameters for the two different types of machine are different enough that a hybrid will tend to not be very good at either task.
A 3-D printer has an extruder assembly that is being moved around in 3 dimensions by stepper motors and the CNC machine has a spindle assembly or router being moved around in 3 dimensions by stepper motors. But the printer has basically no side loads while it moves the extruder assembly around. While the CNC machine has to be designed for significant side loads on the spindle assembly. It also has to be designed to handle the higher weight of the spindle assembly.
The result is that the CNC machine has heavier moving parts which are unnecessary in the 3-D printing process. This added weight significantly slows down the 3-D printing process. Speed can be a very important consideration when many larger parts can already take more than a day to print.
Also CNC machines typically are designed to work with material that is not very thick so they do not need a great deal of Z axis travel. Adding proportionally more Z axis movement like is found in printers means the entire assembly must be bulked up even more.
I do want a CNC machine and am torn between several different design types. The Chinese sell a variety of “inexpensive “6040” machines. Just to get started I have been very tempted by a similar but smaller “3018” machine on Amazon for under $300, https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B074PS7ZP6/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=A16P4TUM521SQ8&psc=1
Another option for me would be to put together a MPCNC (Mostly Printed CNC) machine. The parts are relatively inexpensive and the design is scalable so you can put together something closely tailored to the types of projects that you envision.
The other option that is much better for working with metal is converting an actual milling machine to do CNC work. Their are relatively inexpensive kits for converting a Harbor Freight style 2 speed milling machine to CNC.
The software that I use for designing printed parts can also be used for designing milled parts so I am even more tempted now than I was previously. It is just a matter of time and money.
Yeah, I do understand the limitations, but there is no fundamental reason that one cannot do 3D printing on a CNC mill. True, the physical construction of the CNC mill is huge overkill for an extrusion-based 3D printer, but all that really needs to change is the work head. The basic motion control is the same.
I used TurboCAD Professional to generate the 3D files, but any CAD package that will output STL files would probably work.
The Roland software would suck in the STL file and generate the G-Code (or equivalent) to control the actual movements.
Graphene is being looked at as a cheap, effective way to desalinate sea water. I’ll leave nuclear fusion to people a lot smarter than I am. Not that I have a low IQ but mathematics and physics are not my cup of tea
We are talking apples vs oranges here. The printer that I use is a Monoprice 113860 Maker Select 3D Printer v2. It is a rebadged Wanhao Duplicator i3. This printer has been on the market now for several years and because of its low price, open source roots, easy modification and community support is one of the most prolific 3-D printers on the market. They are currently $269 on Amazon but I got ours for less than $200 on a Black Friday special a couple of years ago.
The Roland MDX-40 is somewhere in the neighborhood of $8000, approximately 40x more than what I spent on my Monoprice Maker Select printer. Even the 6040 4axis Chinese machines that I pine after are typically only around a thousand dollars. And the software that I use Autodesk Fusion 360 is licensed for free to students and hobbyists and the other package Autodesk 123D Design is given away for free by Autodesk on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01HE5O9IM/ref=od_aui_d_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Despite the extremely low investment... I have produced some very interesting and/or amusing parts and devices. This is why I refer to it as one of my most useful tools. Other than a small space savings I no longer see any real advantage to a dual purpose machine. And I didn't even mention the biggest incompatibility.
A 3-D printer is an additive machine that basically makes no mess and can be used in an office or bedroom. Because the jobs can often take many hours they work best if they are kept very clean.
A milling machine depending on what material you are working with can be extremely messy and typically is much better suited for a shop type of environment. The time it takes to perform a milling operation is typically much less than what it takes to print a 3d part so an operator can stand by and clear the chips or shavings and observe the operation.
I used to use a manual engraving machine with templates in the house with brass and aluminum and even it was messy enough that my wife would sometimes have a fit. It was a small desktop machine about the same size as my small manual key duplicating machine which she also insists that I use in my shop area.
The thing that keeps her on my side is that she is a fairly well known historian and lecturer and I make her replicas of hard to find historic pieces that she is able to use in her displays at museums and events. My initial machining experience beyond school shop classes was eight years working as a millwright in a small lumber mill that my family owned. Environmentalists, the economy other factors and interests forced a change of occupation in my late 20s.
In short, they conclude, the problems and delays that patients experience in the NHS, the US healthcare system and elsewhere “will persist in the context of bioprinting”.
Well, from a business perspective, that would be the “hope.” But in the presence of vigorous competition you would see more of a Moore’s Law phenomenon.
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