Puredyne® printheads give the user the necessary flexibility in handling bioinks
Anyone researching bioink knows that developing a good printable ink is not easy and, above all, cost-intensive. It is a complex process to combine water and a biopolymer to form a hydrogel. Only after the gel has been optimized for printing, the mechanical stability of a printed object can be guaranteed.
If researchers for biotechnological applications or start-ups for bioprinters want to make their entire know-how available, a number of points must be taken into account when selecting the technology, especially for the essential process step of printing. On the one hand, the print heads must be optimally designed for the specific properties of a bioink so that print tests succeed with precision and without loss. Secondly, they must be efficient in order to ultimately make it from laboratory scale to series production. Puredyne® provides such a printing technology, which was recently used to print a blood vessel model. The technological challenge was to print the fine vein structures precisely with start and stop points. In the meantime, a variety of biological inks have become established. For example, artificial models are 3D printed from living tissue, forming a scaffold to which living cells can attach and proliferate.
Precise application via the Puredyne® printhead avoids material loss of the cost-intensive bioink, which benefits researchers and is often a customer requirement for equipment manufacturers. The design of the eccentric screw prevents deformation of the cells during printing, which ensures quality. The fact that Puredyne® printheads do not drip and, in addition, volumetric delivery prevents needle clogging makes research efficient and ensures resilient, reproducible results. Scaling up from laboratory scale to production is facilitated. Process reliability is also underlined by intuitive handling of the printhead and process and continuously consistent print quality – ideal for volume production. These facts make Puredyne® products a flexible solution for fast, volumetrically accurate and viscosity-independent printing in material development.
The Puredyne team would be happy to answer any questions.