Materials

xPrint: A new dawn in bioprinting and smart materials?

Smart materials will play a large part in our future. It’s a broad-ranging term that covers everything from memory polymers to truly smart clothes and wearable interfaces. To really exploit this wave of technology we’re going to need a new printer, according to a group of researchers at MIT. The xPrint, a modular liquid solution modelling (LSM) printer, might be just the ticket.

This is a seriously slick printer that can work with everything from polymers to bioprinting micro-organism living cells. It’s hard to overstate just how impressive this is.

The team at MIT was made up of the Media Lab, Chemical Engineering and Design Computation departments. They were joined by Zhejiang University in China and this collaborative effort found a way for those with the knowledge and determination to build a liquid-based smart material printing platform with off the shelf components and a small number of parts that are easily machined or printed.

A modular design for any eventuality

A magnetic modular design allows for reconfiguration on the fly to meet different processing requirements like mechanical mixing, light activation and solution vaporisation. In a bid to make the printer truly accessible, the team made it work with open source software that is highly configurable for specific tasks.

The Human Computer Interaction is leaning towards hydrogels, so liquid-state materials are becoming more important in the future of smart clothes. We really don’t have the tools to exploit their potential, however, as the liquids are complex and require a new precision platform. Viscosity matters, as does the production time. So the team had to produce one printer that was capable of handling a number of different materials, often at the same time, to create a finished product.

This is no simple task and both hardware configuration and firmware clashes have beaten most other attempts to create this type of printer. Some have produced massively complex hack jobs with syringe-based printers designed for food applications. These are not tools that can be readily replicated, though.

The design concept for the xPrint was always to create a simple printer. So we could all have access to a printer that is capable of advanced bioprinting and producing liquid-based interfaces. This is the key to rapid progress.

Off the shelf parts mean anyone can do this

The xPrint is produced from off the shelf hardware and the software platform that is developed specifically for the product, but on top of open source plugins. This is not an esoteric printer for academia. It could also be used by designers, artists and researchers.

It is based on a standard 3-axis CNC platform, two mounting substrates for attaching modular pieces, a breakout control board that supports up to five stepper motors and five input ports. This allows a massive amount of reconfiguration, according to your specific needs.

The printer concentrates on smart, active materials that solidify under specific circumstances, which is a task that is simply beyond most mainstream 3D printers. The commercial and research printers that can do it, inevitably cost a lot and require extensive knowledge to fully exploit.

A fashion designer who uses smart materials used xprint to create this

Fully tested with a range of abilities

The team invited a fashion designer, a scientist who specialises in drug production and an artist who uses thermochromic paint to test the printer. Within two weeks, all of them felt that this printer could enhance their workflow and help them achieve results that were simply impossible beforehand.

So xPrint started as a scientific exercise, but this could really be the 3D printer of the future, or at least the basis of it. It’s a chance to bioprint, create smart materials and liquid interfaces. It can even do the routine stuff, and it’s open source.

This is a big deal right here, so keep an eyeout for xPrint news.

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