NEST3D Printing

From RMIT University (Melbourne, Australia):    “Negative patterns in a water-soluble sacrificial template can be “developed” by casting in a secondary material and dissolving the template, creating exquisitely complex 3D structures including hyper-branched dendritic structures and open lattices with stiffnesses tuneable over 3 orders of magnitude. The technique is amenable to a plethora of materials from biodegradable thermoplastics (such as polycaprolactone) to resins (including acrylic and epoxy), silicones (including the Sylgard 184 polydimethylsiloxane formulation), ceramics (including hydroxyapatite composites), hydrogels (including agarose and gelatin methacryloyl), low-melt temperature metal alloys and others. Using an unmodified, consumer-grade printer, NEST3D printing achieves high resolution, intricate biomaterial structures with potential applications in biomedical implants and tissue engineering scaffolds.”  MORE

Image Credit: onlinelibrary.wiley.com