Page 596 - IJB-10-3

International

Journal of Bioprinting

RESEARCH ARTICLE
Development of a five-axis printer for the

fabrication of hybrid 3D scaffolds: From soft to
hard phases and planar to curved surfaces

Michael Kainz * id , Isabel Caetano da Silva , Paula Schumann , Julia Kastner ,
1
1
1
1
Thomas Voglhuber , Lukas Hartung , Sandra Haas , Milan Rathod ,
2
1
1
1
Adrián Martínez Cendrero 3 id , Tilo Dehne , Daniel Seitz 5 id , Gunpreet Oberoi 6,7 id ,
4
Erik Kornfellner 6 id , Andrés Díaz Lantada 3 id , Francesco Moscato 6,8,9 id ,
1
and Elena Guillén * id
1 Functional Surfaces and Nanostructures, Profactor GmbH, Steyr-Gleink, Upper Austria, Austria
2 Machine Vision, Profactor GmbH, Steyr-Gleink, Upper Austria, Austria
3 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Polytechnic University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain
4 Laboratory for Tissue Engineering, Department of Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology,
Charité - University Medicine Berlin, Berlin, Germany
5 Laboratory of Additive Manufacture and Material Science, BioMed Center Innovation gGmbH,
Bayreuth, Germany
6 Center for Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna,
Austria
7
Austrian Center for Medical Innovation and Technology (ACMIT GmbH), Wiener Neustadt, Austria
8 Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Cardiovascular Research, Vienna, Austria
9 Austrian Cluster for Tissue Regeneration, Vienna, Austria
*Corresponding authors:
Michael Kainz
(michael.kainz@profactor.at)
Elena Guillén Abstract
(elena.guillen@profactor.at)
Citation: Kainz M, Caetano da Three-dimensional (3D) printing of hybrid scaffolds with material gradients,
Silva I, Schumann P, et al. combining soft and hard phases, is an appealing frontier in additive manufacturing.
Development of a five-axis printer
for the fabrication of hybrid 3D However, most 3D printers are limited to either three-axis or mono-material
scaffolds: From soft to hard phases capabilities, rendering them unsuitable for fabricating hybrid scaffolds. Additionally,
and planar to curved surfaces. printing on curved surfaces requires advanced printing capabilities. Our work aims
Int J Bioprint. 2024;10(3):3189.
doi: 10.36922/ijb.3189 to advance additive manufacturing by developing a hybrid piezoelectric inkjet-
extrusion printer equipped with five-axis functionalities. The printer could be used
Received: March 17, 2024 to fabricate customized hybrid scaffolds, surpassing conventional mono-material
Accepted: April 9, 2024
Published Online: June 14, 2024 or linear three-axis printing strategies. The soft phase comprises a low-viscosity
photocurable resin and a high-viscosity peptide hydrogel, while the hard phase
Copyright: © 2024 Author(s).
This is an Open Access article comprises 3D-printed polylactic acid and hydroxyapatite parts. To validate the
distributed under the terms of the system, we fabricated three hybrid scaffolding use cases, characterized by multi-
Creative Commons Attribution material porous structures fabricated on planar, single-curved, and free-form
License, permitting distribution,
and reproduction in any medium, surfaces. The scaffolds were subsequently analyzed using digital microscopy to assess
provided the original work is their accuracy, particularly the feature sizes of pores and struts (i.e., 0.8–3.6 mm). In
properly cited. the first part of the study, we demonstrated the versatility of inkjet and extrusion
Publisher’s Note: AccScience printing by hybrid printing an interconnected network in the soft phase on top of a
Publishing remains neutral with planar ceramic hard phase. A pore width and height deviation of 6% was achieved
regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional compared to the intended design. In the second part of the study, we evaluated the
affiliations. 3D inkjet printing of a multi-material porous scaffold on a single-curved surface for

Volume 10 Issue 3 (2024) 588 doi: 10.36922/ijb.3189