Equipment for development of a novel and customized additive manufacturing (3D printing) workstation for producing heterogeneous soft tissues/implants, extracorporeal devices and prostheses

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This Research Tools and Instruments (RTI) proposal aims at establishing a novel and customized in-house additive manufacturing (AM) workstation. This critical workstation will allow us to fabricate anatomically-shaped soft tissues/implants, wearable devices and prostheses with heterogeneous internal properties/architectures such as variable density, variable soft materials, conformal channels and varying porosity. The requested components of this novel workstation will establish a critical platform, enabling the group to remove several major obstacles hindering the development of the abovementioned devices. This highly needed setup will add a new dimension to the fabrication of anatomically-shaped soft medical devices by enabling the following capabilities: (i) incorporation of different polymers and soft bio-materials across structures with different viscosities, (ii) creation of conformal passages, (iii) creation of controlled, pre-determined density distributions in desired orientations, (iv) selective injection of polymeric elements on planar and non-planar surfaces, and (v ) insertion of a sacrificial porogen material to control the level of macro-porosity in desired regions of the structures.