Sun Wenhuan, Feinberg Adam, Webster-Wood Victoria
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, United States.
HardwareX. 2022 Mar 24;11:e00297. doi: 10.1016/j.ohx.2022.e00297. eCollection 2022 Apr.
Recent advances in Freeform Reversible Embedding of Suspended Hydrogels (FRESH), a technique that is compatible with most open-source desktop 3D printers, has enabled the fabrication of complex 3D structures using a wide range of natural and synthetic hydrogels, whose mechanical properties can be modified by embedding long fibers into printed hydrogels. However, fiber extruders dedicated for this application are not commercially available or previously reported. To address this, we have designed a continuous fiber extruder (CFE) that is compatible with low-cost, open-source desktop 3D printers, and demonstrated its performance using a Flashforge Creator-pro printer with a Replistruder-2.0 print-head. Key characteristics of the CFE include: (1) it is affordable, accessible and user-friendly to the 3D printing community due to its low fabrication cost and compatibility with open-source hardware and software, (2) it can embed user-defined 2D and 3D features using long fibers into different types of hydrogels, (3) it works with fibers of different mechanical properties and sizes, (4) it can modify mechanical properties of FRESH printed hydrogels via long fiber embedding.
悬浮水凝胶自由形态可逆嵌入技术（FRESH）取得了最新进展，该技术与大多数开源桌面3D打印机兼容，能够使用多种天然和合成水凝胶制造复杂的3D结构，通过将长纤维嵌入打印的水凝胶中可以改变其机械性能。然而，专门用于此应用的纤维挤出机尚无商业产品，也未见先前报道。为解决这一问题，我们设计了一种与低成本开源桌面3D打印机兼容的连续纤维挤出机（CFE），并使用配备Replistruder-2.0打印头的Flashforge Creator-pro打印机展示了其性能。CFE的关键特性包括：（1）由于制造成本低且与开源硬件和软件兼容，对3D打印社区来说价格实惠、易于获取且用户友好；（2）它可以使用长纤维将用户定义的2D和3D特征嵌入不同类型的水凝胶中；（3）它适用于具有不同机械性能和尺寸的纤维；（4）它可以通过长纤维嵌入来改变FRESH打印水凝胶的机械性能。
