Printing of alginate beads
- Modified 3d-printer with compressed-air supply
During the lab course of the 6th semester, the printer was refined again to enable printing of small-sized alginate beads. Besides mounting of metal braces, to stabilize the printhead, a compressed air supply was attached to the printing nozzle, allowing every bead emerging from the tip to be blown off right away.
The developed method above met the aim of the project, which consisted of generating beads with a diameter around 500 microns and positioning them automatically into a 24-well plate. Furthermore, fibroblasts were embedded into the beads and stained via fluorescent dye, to distinguish between alive and dead cells, right after the printing process.
[Jan-Philipp Magnus, Dario Ringer, Anette Trojnacki - WS 2016/2017]