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Old Inkjet Becomes New Bio-Materials Printer
MikeChino writes "Instructables member Patrik has successfully transformed an old HP5150 inkjet printer into a DIY bioprinter. To do this he removed the plastic covers and panels and rewired the paper handling mechanism. Then he prepped ink cartridges to be able to handle biological materials by opening the lid, removing the ink, and washing it out with deionized water. For his first experiment, he printed a simple solution of arabinose onto filter paper."
My understanding is that inkjets work in one of two ways, either boiling the ink in the nozzles to make them squirt, or subjecting the ink to extreme pressure using piezo. What effect would that have on trying to print (presumably live) cells?
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Aside from the ugly business of working around all the annoying interlocks that inkjets have for atypical paper feed/consumables condition/problems that exist only in their own imagination/etc. which generally stop the printer dead, regardless of how mechanically healthy it is; a problem that is annoying, but solvable with sufficient electronics hackery skill, I'd be curious to know how well biological 'inks', or any other not-formulated-for-the-purpose materials deal with the inkjet mechanism.
In piezolelectric inkjet printers, an electrically actuated piezo element provides the slight expansion necessary to shove a droplet of ink out of the nozzle. I'd assume that anything that is tolerant of small(but high frequency, a piezo head can shove out some tens of thousands of droplets per second, and at fair speed, so there are probably stresses that particularly whiny and structurally complex organic molecules can't handle) pressure waves should be fine.
However, particularly among consumer cheapies, thermal inkjets have become quite common: these use a pulse of current across a resistive element to vaporize part of the ink, the expansion of which drives the remaining ink out of the chamber and toward the target. The amount of heat is small in absolute terms(the vaporization chambers are constructed by photolithiographic techniques, to give a sense of scale; but enough heat to flash-vaporize ink is quite probably enough heat to denature common proteins and/or turn common biological materials into a layer of gooey carbon gunk that clogs the print head in short order.
Any word on whether piezo printers are best for this application, or does thermal work much better than I would naively expect?
This document tastes like chicken!
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
Now this is news for nerds!
If computers were people, I'd be a misanthrope.
The bitch is finding Genuine HP Bio Print Cartridges.
Inkjets have been used for years to print living cells and also the scaffolding for cells to adhere to. The problem isn't so much the tech but the sea of patents blocking anyone from bringing a complete system to market. When this problem is solved look for rapid progress on many fronts. Until then maybe it will only be available in countries that favor technological progress over nurturing an obsessive compulsion to hoard money that goes unused.
Patents are the problem with tissue engineering, just as it is with other 3D print applications. I'm not against patents. It's just that the current way it's being run isn't working to help move tech progress forward, it only helps a few to make money and also keep control over the rate of progress.
Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
Found your printer on Google. Stand by for some Ebola.
Have gnu, will travel.
Hmm. bakers have been doing this for years to print edible pictures for on top of cakes.
Look, various labs at the UW in Seattle have been doing this for a long time, in Biochem, Medical Genetics, and various other departments.
In fact, we paint the print heads purple for our school colors.
Been doing it for at least 8 years now.
Just read any scientific journal with research done by us.
Note: I have no idea if we patented any of this, but that doesn't mean we didn't.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I really liked this article. It explains what they did, with discussion at each step for tricky points or ideas for future improvement. Then it provides an example of a simple way that the modified printer can be put to use.
At the end it compares the size of the ink nozzles with the size of various cells, and concludes that a purpose-built printer would probably be better. Especially because there seems to be an ink filter with a very small screen inside the cartridge!
One idea left unexplored: would an older inkjet printer work better? Nozzle sizes would be larger. Possibly old cartridges might not even have an ink filter?
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
He's printing Arab Noses? Aren't they big enough already?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Is that what passes for a "hack" these days? Here's a real hack that everyone can get excited about.
Epson printers use piezo print heads. These are available for thin money everywhere, sometimes for free: salvation army store, town dump, craigslist.
Hackers are using these to print etch-resist directly to copper-clad boards for making PCBs. The Epson ink is wax based instead of pigment based, so some of the inks make good etch resist (Mispro yellow apparently works best.) (Glossing over a few details.)
The cartridges are counter locked, but you can purchase a reflash tool on eBay for under $5 that will reset the code counter on any cartridge.
You can also purchase new, empty cartridges for just about any printer online (example: inksupply.com). That might be more convenient than trying to wash out a used cartridge, and the used cartridge may have wear-and-tear anyway.
The original article claims that the small nozzle/droplet size of modern printers make them unsuitable for biological printing. I'm skeptical of this claim, but if they say so...
Epson printers (and most inkjet printers in general) have a single photo-interrupter that detects proper paper feed. These are simple units - not the complex photocopiers in your workplace.
In the case of Epson, once the motor starts the paper has to trip the photo-interrupter within a window of some milliseconds (like - between 1/2 and 1 second) or the unit will throw a paper jam error.
After removing all the gears and rollers in the back of the printer, you have the photo-interrupter in hand, still wired to the unit. An easy way to use it is to make a "carrier board" on which to place your medium (filter paper, for instance). Put a notch in the front corner of the carrier so that when the first part of the carrier goes through the paper feed it doesn't trip the interrupter, but past the notch it does. If you cut your notch to the right length the timing is obeyed and the carrier is processed as a piece of paper.
(IOW, the leading edge of the carrier is 8" wide, because a 1/2" strip is cut from one side. Two inches further in the paper is 8 1/2" wide. The photo-interrupter is placed so that the notch doesn't interrupt, but the full width does.)
The print head rides above the paper surface roughly .06" (varies with printer, and is adjustable on some printers), so you may need to raise the print head a little. A dremel tool cutoff wheel and some washers for spacing will work here.
Is the HP nanny program going to remind you to replace your empty bio-material cartridge only with an official HP Bio-Material InkJet cartridge?
You know, I thought that having an PWNable internet-connected printer was bad because some guy could print out goatse pictures.
Even worse would be a "bioprinter" where it could be printer in some 3d, flesh-like material....
http://m.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/health/a-3-d-machine-that-prints-skin-how-burn-care-could-be-revolutionized/article7540819/?service=mobile