I am planning to create training about 3D printing technologies to create lab equipment. The idea is to talk about the tools to create the file (or where to find existing files on Internet) and the increasing number of technologies (from plastic filament to biocompatible resin, stainless steel or ceramic) with the advantages and precision of each technology.
For each technology, I would like to present applications examples from bioreactor to microfluidic applications etc. What do you think about this type of training? Do you think it would it be helpful? Would you like to contribute by sharing your experience or showing applications examples?
I would be happy to have your thoughts many thanks in advance for your time and I am looking forward to read your feedback.
I think this would be great ! It’ll be cool if we can extend 3DuF to support some of the applications you’re talking about. I thinks there’s a completely untapped space for microfluidics + bioreactors.
Hi, that would be great! I had a quick look at 3DuF and it looks very interesting. We could imagine to combine both. I am pretty much interested by 3D printing technologies with very high resolution (10th of micron). Another topic I am starting to work on is the integration of sensors
Could we plan a chat to discuss about it in more details? Where are you based?
cheers,
Tanguy
This sounds like a great idea! More guidance on the latest biocompatible and autoclavable resins would be helpful, I dug into this a little bit before:
Jim Haseloff also did a lot of digging into materials for high temp biological applications (e.g. thermocyclers) and recommended this filament that doesn’t need a very fancy printer and is temperature-resistant up to 160 °C
Many thanks @jcm80 and @jpearce for these inputs! This is very interesting information. I am facing similar issues since some time to get clear information about the (bio) chemical compatibility of 3d printed polymers.
I am planning to go beyond fdm 3D printing technologies and include stereolithography which give interesting options with high precision possibilities (dental industries are using a lot this type of technology and the use is increasing with microfluidic applications). SLS give also an interesting possibility to 3d print polyamide which has great (bio)chemical resistance.
All these inputs help me to structure topics I will talk about.
On a more practical point of view, Is there a way to share documents? How do you work generally?
Varied
I’d say the main thing is, do you imagine writing this yourself and potentially having others add sections independently and asynchronously or do you want a document(s) where lots of people can pile in with content, review, leave comments etc? Do you see this growing as a collaborative project or would you like to keep it small and simple?
The GOSH community has done quite a bit of collaborative work on google docs (yes, they are not open source but for collaborative group editing, commenting and track changes on materials that merge text, tables and images, there is no open alternative that gets close, sadly) and then final text gets transferred to whatever platform people have chosen to host, usually a wiki or website or gitlab repository. Often some kind of landing page on wiki or gitlab is set up to host a description of the project, links to relevant docs and a task list etc from the start, particularly if you want to make it an open project.
In principle you could write on a more static platform first and have people comment via something like Hypothesis but it is more of a faff, in my experience…at least during early content production phase. I find some kind of seamless commenting feature essential for collaborative writing.
I’d encourage you to use the forum to share links to relevant docs and requests for help/input/feedback.
Caveat that if you ask 10 people this question you’ll get 10 answers but these are my general thoughts on what I’ve seen work for this type of content production in the past.
Thanks @jcm80 ! I think that a growing collaborative project could be very interesting → I will probably go for a google doc. There are so many possibilities regarding the 3D printed materials that it will be usefull to get more contributors
I will start to structure it and I will share it when I have a first structure.
@Tanguy I’m gonna DM you, we are starting to try and kick off a small microfluidics community (with community calls and all). It’ll be great if you can drop by into one of those.
@jcm80 I think if we can start off with a couple of google docs with all the relevant material, I think it’ll be a great place to start. The best way to make these kinds of projects work is to have some kind of a common starting point for everyone, allowing folks to agree upon some level of detail the documentation needs to have for a project.
@rkrishnasanka That’s a great initiative ! I will be happy to join the community
For the documentation in share document, I wonder if we should make different sections depending on the applications and/or the technology ? I discussed with several researchers and their needs varies depending on the type projects. In some cases, they are interested in larger scale equipment (like bioreactors) which could be done with FDM and, some others, are interested by applications requiring higher precision (like microfluidic) → FDM is generally not approriate and SLA is often chosen. Do you think it would be more efficient to do one document with two sections or two documents ?
It might be good to start with 1 document (with multiple sections) and then split up when it seems like theres enough content for it be a decent standalone document.
We should start by compiling requirements for different people, that would in turn let us guide the entire community’s set of projects better (even if its among multiple documents).
many thanks in advance for your time and I am looking forward to read your feedback.