[HN Gopher] 3D-printable tissue adhesive
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       3D-printable tissue adhesive
        
       Author : wglb
       Score  : 31 points
       Date   : 2024-02-23 17:56 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (medicalxpress.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (medicalxpress.com)
        
       | sillysaurusx wrote:
       | How timely. I keep ending up in cutting edge fields by accident.
       | 
       | I think there's a lot of untapped potential in 3D printing.
       | People have been saying that for years, but it might be different
       | now, thanks to resin printers.
       | 
       | I've been putting together my notes on how to get into this
       | space, since I was bootstrapping myself from zero knowledge. But
       | the cliff's notes are: bought a Form 3+
       | https://formlabs.com/3d-printers/form-3/ with 1 liter of clear
       | resin. The price point for everything is around $5k, which is
       | just beyond most hobby investments, but it's honestly not bad for
       | what you get in return: repeatable, precise prints, with a
       | variety of materials.
       | 
       | What surprised me was that the dental industry has already been
       | using this tech for over a decade in a bio-safe way. Formlabs has
       | an entire dental offering that caters to the industry. One funny
       | picture was an office with ~40 printers stacked on shelves.
       | Realistically a dental office only needs one, since you can make
       | an entire tray of dental inserts in (I think) a few hours.
       | 
       | Materials are where things get interesting. As this article
       | shows, there are an endless variety of materials that you can
       | print. The reason people haven't gone beyond traditional 3D print
       | projects is because normal 3D printer filament kind of sucks.
       | It's not precise, it takes forever, and it jams. With resin
       | printers, you can print out molds that you can fill with whatever
       | material you want to use. (I'm not sure about putting
       | questionable resin-type substances into your printer; Formlabs
       | seems to want you to buy their official approved resins, but
       | presuambly there must be some way to do what the article does.
       | The difference between a resin printer and what MIT is doing
       | doesn't seem huge.)
       | 
       | ZBrush is nice because it costs $20 for students and comes with a
       | 3D Print Hub plugin that exports your model to Preform, the
       | software for Form 3. https://i.imgur.com/wfcMP3s.png I also
       | happen to have some ZBrush experience since my background is in
       | gamedev. It's not _too_ hard to pick up, but there 's a learning
       | curve; udemy courses are good.
       | 
       | My current problem is that I know nothing about electronics, and
       | I'm interested in printing toys. So today I'll be learning about
       | haptics, motors, and how to assemble everything. (If anyone has
       | any tips on where to start, I'd appreciate it. It seems like I'll
       | want a lightweight battery, some kind of motor, and some kind of
       | Arduino-something to drive it. But whatever it is, I'll find out
       | and write about it somewhere.)
        
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       (page generated 2024-02-23 23:00 UTC)