Opening New Frontiers in the Development of Life Sciences Technology with Collaborative 3D Printing Technology

摘要

It is difficult to go anywhere without hearing about 3D printing, and the laboratory is no exception. In this issue, JALA presents a special collection of four articles that address the use of 3D printing technologies in laboratory automation. We tried to approach the subject with a bit less hype than many of the articles currently being published. The fact is the articles in this issue demonstrate that 3D printing is already changing things in laboratory automation. In our opinion, 3D printing will be a major paradigm shift, opening up new capabilities for assay and equipment design. Given the amount of recent press, one would think 3D printing was invented recently. This, however, is not true. 3D printing, also known as rapid prototyping or additive manufacturing, has been around for at least the past 40 years, with roots going back 150 years.1Bourell, D. L. A Brief History of Additive Manufacturing and the 2009 Roadmap for Additive Manufacturing: Looking Back and Looking Ahead. In US-Turkey Workshop on Rapid Technologies, September 24, 2009, 5–11.Google Scholar Many of the early printers are built on the principle of using a precision-guided laser to cure ultraviolet (UV) hardening resins.1Bourell, D. L. A Brief History of Additive Manufacturing and the 2009 Roadmap for Additive Manufacturing: Looking Back and Looking Ahead. In US-Turkey Workshop on Rapid Technologies, September 24, 2009, 5–11.Google Scholar This process, known as stereolithography, consists of submerging the part being printed just below the surface of the resin and using an X,Y robot to direct a UV laser to harden the solid areas of the part.2Gonzalez C.J. The Engineering behind Additive Manufacturing and the 3-D Printing Revolution. 2013. http://nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=129780Google Scholar More recently, we have seen an explosion of fused deposition modeling (FDM) printers,3Gao W. The Status, Challenges, and Future of Additive Manufacturing in Engineering.Comput. Aided Design. 2015; 69: 65-89Crossref Scopus (1568) Google Scholar where plastic is extruded from a fine nozzle and deposited on a workpiece layer by layer, typically using acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) plastic of which the familiar Legos are made. This is akin to a precision-guided hot glue gun depositing glue only on the solid pieces of the part. The FDM approach does not require the expensive UV curing resins or UV lasers, which has significantly lowered the cost to build and operate a 3D printer. Entry-level printers are now available for less than $1000.4Coakley M. Hurt D.E. 3D Printing in the Laboratory: Maximize Time and Funds with Customized and Open Source Labware.J. Lab. Autom. 2016; 21: 489-495Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (86) Google Scholar In addition to the lower costs of additive printers, the open-source hardware movement has made a substantial impact. Almost all of the low-cost FDM 3D printers available have their roots in the open-source world. Alden Hart developed one of the more successful 3D motion controllers (TinyG) with members of his local hackerspace, HacDC. The 3D printing open-source community grew out of the larger maker movement where individuals strived to build things collaboratively outside of the scope of large enterprises.5Deloitte Center for the Edge and Maker Media. Impact of the Maker Movement. 2014. http://makermedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/impact-of-the-maker-movement.pdfGoogle Scholar This community saw the need for automation, and there were a number of people who focused their efforts on developing inexpensive, open-source, highly precise XYZ 3D motion control systems. By combining an XYZ platform with an extruder, a 3D printer is born. The choice of extruder determines what is deposited, allowing 3D printers to deposit not just plastics but living cells to construct organs and assay platforms.6Rimann M. Bono E. Annaheim H. et al.Standardized 3D Bioprinting of Soft Tissue Models with Human Primary Cells