Opening New Frontiers in the Development of Life Sciences Technology with Collaborative 3D Printing Technology

It is difficult to go anywhere without hearing about 3D printing, and the laboratory is no exception. In this issue, JALA presents a special collection of four articles that address the use of 3D printing technologies in laboratory automation. We tried to approach the subject with a bit less hype than many of the articles currently being published. The fact is the articles in this issue demonstrate that 3D printing is already changing things in laboratory automation. In our opinion, 3D printing will be a major paradigm shift, opening up new capabilities for assay and equipment design.

Given the amount of recent press, one would think 3D printing was invented recently. This, however, is not true. 3D printing, also known as rapid prototyping or additive manufacturing, has been around for at least the past 40 years, with roots going back 150 years. ¹

Many of the early printers are built on the principle of using a precision-guided laser to cure ultraviolet (UV) hardening resins. ¹ This process, known as stereolithography, consists of submerging the part being printed just below the surface of the resin and using an X,Y robot to direct a UV laser to harden the solid areas of the part. ²

More recently, we have seen an explosion of fused deposition modeling (FDM) printers, ³ where plastic is extruded from a fine nozzle and deposited on a workpiece layer by layer, typically using acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) plastic of which the familiar Legos are made. This is akin to a precision-guided hot glue gun depositing glue only on the solid pieces of the part. The FDM approach does not require the expensive UV curing resins or UV lasers, which has significantly lowered the cost to build and operate a 3D printer. Entry-level printers are now available for less than $1000. ⁴

In addition to the lower costs of additive printers, the open-source hardware movement has made a substantial impact. Almost all of the low-cost FDM 3D printers available have their roots in the open-source world. Alden Hart developed one of the more successful 3D motion controllers (TinyG) with members of his local hackerspace, HacDC. The 3D printing open-source community grew out of the larger maker movement where individuals strived to build things collaboratively outside of the scope of large enterprises. ⁵ This community saw the need for automation, and there were a number of people who focused their efforts on developing inexpensive, open-source, highly precise XYZ 3D motion control systems. By combining an XYZ platform with an extruder, a 3D printer is born. The choice of extruder determines what is deposited, allowing 3D printers to deposit not just plastics but living cells to construct organs and assay platforms.^6,7

A key principle of open-source hardware is that owners and users should be able to repair and change objects to suit their needs. This is where the real impact of 3D printing in laboratory automation is being made. Scientists are able to rapidly customize their apparatuses, making new experiments possible without long lead times. They can create new kinds of equipment and develop equipment that would ordinarily be too expensive for small labs. This is not to say that there is not a role for laboratory equipment suppliers; they do and will continue to provide real value. As 3D printing becomes more common, laboratory equipment suppliers will benefit from insights derived from prototypes and provide the necessary expertise to optimize and make these prototypes commercial grade. In addition, industry experience at building to scale large-scale customer support and training will be required to translate these 3D printing-derived prototypes into the commercial space.

This special collection of reports in this issue of JALA features four articles. First, Coakley and Hurt ⁴ provide a comprehensive overview of the work being performed by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) 3D Printing Group. This group is not only exploring new ways to use 3D printing but also maintains a large library of plans and computer-aided design (CAD) files ready for downloading and printing by any printer (http://3dprint.nih.gov). These include both apparatus and a number of models of biological parts 3D protein models, anatomical structures, and prosthetics. The NIH 3D Printing Group is a good resource to start with when exploring the potential of 3D printing.

Markus Rimann and his colleagues at Zurich University of Applied Sciences demonstrate the development and implementation of 3D printing technology to deposit living cells.^6,7 As the authors point out, cells are dependent on their surroundings for their behaviors. The ability to “print” combinations of cells in precise locations provides an exciting capability to develop new cell-based assays.

Finally, the use of a 3D motion platform in the laboratory is presented in two studies that provide an excellent overview of how to create custom apparatuses. The first study illustrates the development of a device to construct micro-channels for microfluidics. ⁸ The second study demonstrates the development of a general-purpose instrument that can be used for a variety of laboratory procedures. ⁹ Both of these studies are a result of the University of Michigan Open Laboratory Initiative. Like the NIH, this initiative is a resource of ideas and plans for instruments that can be custom built by researchers using 3D-printed parts.

We hope this collection sheds light on the transformative potential of 3D printing and how researchers might apply it in their own situations. We also hope that the life sciences discovery and technology community takes on the challenges faced by scientists who came before us—when every chemistry department had a glassblower to make custom kits and the scientists were required to design and fabricate their own equipment from parts they had available. The open-source approach to equipment allows scientists to unleash their creativity and build new and revolutionary tools that enable previously unfeasible experiments.