Kinstlinger Ian S, Bastian Andreas, Paulsen Samantha J, Hwang Daniel H, Ta Anderson H, Yalacki David R, Schmidt Tim, Miller Jordan S
Department of Bioengineering, Rice University, Houston, Texas, United States of America.
Lansing Makers Network, Lansing, Michigan, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2016 Feb 3;11(2):e0147399. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0147399. eCollection 2016.
Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) is an additive manufacturing process that uses a laser to fuse powdered starting materials into solid 3D structures. Despite the potential for fabrication of complex, high-resolution structures with SLS using diverse starting materials (including biomaterials), prohibitive costs of commercial SLS systems have hindered the wide adoption of this technology in the scientific community. Here, we developed a low-cost, open-source SLS system (OpenSLS) and demonstrated its capacity to fabricate structures in nylon with sub-millimeter features and overhanging regions. Subsequently, we demonstrated fabrication of polycaprolactone (PCL) into macroporous structures such as a diamond lattice. Widespread interest in using PCL for bone tissue engineering suggests that PCL lattices are relevant model scaffold geometries for engineering bone. SLS of materials with large powder grain size (~500 μm) leads to part surfaces with high roughness, so we further introduced a simple vapor-smoothing technique to reduce the surface roughness of sintered PCL structures which further improves their elastic modulus and yield stress. Vapor-smoothed PCL can also be used for sacrificial templating of perfusable fluidic networks within orthogonal materials such as poly(dimethylsiloxane) silicone. Finally, we demonstrated that human mesenchymal stem cells were able to adhere, survive, and differentiate down an osteogenic lineage on sintered and smoothed PCL surfaces, suggesting that OpenSLS has the potential to produce PCL scaffolds useful for cell studies. OpenSLS provides the scientific community with an accessible platform for the study of laser sintering and the fabrication of complex geometries in diverse materials.
选择性激光烧结(SLS)是一种增材制造工艺,它使用激光将粉末状原材料熔合为固态三维结构。尽管使用SLS利用多种原材料(包括生物材料)制造复杂、高分辨率结构具有潜力,但商业SLS系统高昂的成本阻碍了该技术在科学界的广泛应用。在此,我们开发了一种低成本、开源的SLS系统(OpenSLS),并展示了其制造具有亚毫米特征和悬垂区域的尼龙结构的能力。随后,我们展示了将聚己内酯(PCL)制造成大孔结构,如菱形晶格。对使用PCL进行骨组织工程的广泛关注表明,PCL晶格是工程化骨的相关模型支架几何形状。对具有大粉末粒度(约500μm)的材料进行SLS会导致零件表面粗糙度较高,因此我们进一步引入了一种简单的蒸汽平滑技术来降低烧结PCL结构的表面粗糙度,这进一步提高了它们的弹性模量和屈服应力。蒸汽平滑的PCL还可用于在诸如聚二甲基硅氧烷等正交材料内对可灌注流体网络进行牺牲模板化。最后,我们证明了人间充质干细胞能够在烧结和平滑的PCL表面上粘附、存活并沿成骨谱系分化,这表明OpenSLS有潜力生产可用于细胞研究的PCL支架。OpenSLS为科学界提供了一个可用于研究激光烧结和制造各种材料复杂几何形状的平台。