Chapter 7
Additive Manufacturing Using Melt Extruded
Thermoplastics for Tissue Engineering
Andrea Roberto Calore, Ravi Sinha, Jules Harings,
Katrien V. Bernaerts, Carlos Mota, and Lorenzo Moroni
Abstract
Melt extrusion of thermoplastic materials is an important technique for fabricating tissue engineering
scaffolds by additive manufacturing methods. Scaffold manufacturing is commonly achieved by one of
the following extrusion-based techniques: fused deposition modelling (FDM), 3D-fiber deposition (3DF),
and bioextrusion. FDM needs the input material to be strictly in the form of a filament, whereas 3DF and
bioextrusion can be used to process input material in several forms, such as pellets or powder. This chapter
outlines a common workflow for all these methods, going from the material to a scaffold, while highlighting
the special requirements of particular methods. A few ways of characterizing the scaffolds are also briefly
described.
Key words Tissue engineering, Scaffolds, 3D printing, Fused deposition modelling, Bioextrusion,
3D-fiber deposition, Biofabrication
1 Introduction
Additive manufacturing (AM) is a group of well-established techniques in industry to rapidly manufacture objects in a layer-by-layer
manner where each individual layer is also created progressively,
adding material rather than removing it. Since the last three decades, it has been applied in tissue engineering (TE) to manufacture
scaffolds with very complex shapes, thanks to its high degree of
control on architectural parameters such as pore size, pore shape,
and porosity [1, 2].
Depending on the material to be processed and on the processing method itself (which are highly interrelated), several AM techniques have been developed over the last decades. A possible
Alberto Rainer and Lorenzo Moroni (eds.), Computer-Aided Tissue Engineering: Methods and Protocols,
Methods in Molecular Biology, vol. 2147, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-0611-7_7,
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2021
Electronic supplementary material: The online version of this chapter (https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-07160611-7_7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
75
Additive Manufacturing Using Melt Extruded
Thermoplastics for Tissue Engineering
Andrea Roberto Calore, Ravi Sinha, Jules Harings,
Katrien V. Bernaerts, Carlos Mota, and Lorenzo Moroni
Abstract
Melt extrusion of thermoplastic materials is an important technique for fabricating tissue engineering
scaffolds by additive manufacturing methods. Scaffold manufacturing is commonly achieved by one of
the following extrusion-based techniques: fused deposition modelling (FDM), 3D-fiber deposition (3DF),
and bioextrusion. FDM needs the input material to be strictly in the form of a filament, whereas 3DF and
bioextrusion can be used to process input material in several forms, such as pellets or powder. This chapter
outlines a common workflow for all these methods, going from the material to a scaffold, while highlighting
the special requirements of particular methods. A few ways of characterizing the scaffolds are also briefly
described.
Key words Tissue engineering, Scaffolds, 3D printing, Fused deposition modelling, Bioextrusion,
3D-fiber deposition, Biofabrication
1 Introduction
Additive manufacturing (AM) is a group of well-established techniques in industry to rapidly manufacture objects in a layer-by-layer
manner where each individual layer is also created progressively,
adding material rather than removing it. Since the last three decades, it has been applied in tissue engineering (TE) to manufacture
scaffolds with very complex shapes, thanks to its high degree of
control on architectural parameters such as pore size, pore shape,
and porosity [1, 2].
Depending on the material to be processed and on the processing method itself (which are highly interrelated), several AM techniques have been developed over the last decades. A possible
Alberto Rainer and Lorenzo Moroni (eds.), Computer-Aided Tissue Engineering: Methods and Protocols,
Methods in Molecular Biology, vol. 2147, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-0611-7_7,
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2021
Electronic supplementary material: The online version of this chapter (https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-07160611-7_7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
75