3D Bioplotter Research Papers
Direct ink writing to fabricate porous acetabular cups from titanium alloy
Acetabular cups, which are among the most important implants in total hip arthroplasty, are usually made from titanium alloys with high porosity and adequate mechanical properties. The current three-dimensional (3D) printing approaches to fabricate customized acetabular cups have some inherent disadvantages such as high cost and energy consumption, residual thermal stress, and relatively low efficiency. Thus, in this work, a direct ink writing method was developed to print a cup structure at room temperature, followed by multi-step heat treatment to form microscale porous structure within the acetabular cup. Our method is facilitated by the development of a self-supporting titanium-6 aluminum-4…
Three-Dimensional Printing in Stimuli-Responsive Yield-Stress Fluid with an Interactive Dual Microstructure
Yield-stress support bath-enabled three-dimensional (3D) printing has been widely used in recent years for diverse applications. However, current yield-stress fluids usually possess single microstructures and still face the challenges of on-demand adding and/or removing support bath materials during printing, constraining their application scope. This study aims to propose a concept of stimuli-responsive yield-stress fluids with an interactive dual microstructure as support bath materials. The microstructure from a yield-stress additive allows the fluids to present switchable states at different stresses, facilitating an embedded 3D printing process. The microstructure from stimuli-responsive polymers enables the fluids to have regulable rheological properties upon external…