Printability Assessment of Three Dimensional Bioprinter modified from Filament Deposition Modeling Printer using Carboxy Methyl Cellulose – Gelatin as Model Bioink

Three dimensional (3D) bioprinting is an innovative technology that can precisely fabricate functional tissue constructs or organs by accurately positioning living cells and biomaterial in a controlled manner. Given its high similarity to extracellular matrix of the cells, hydrogels are widely used biomaterial in bio-printing as bioink. Depositing bioink in 3D requires computer controlled dispensing system in layer-by-layer fashion using a bioprinter. The 3D bioprinter also plays crucial role in determining the printability of a bioink making the phenomenon as an ability determined by combination of properties of bioink and the bioprinter. Despite availability of expensive bioprinters commercially, efforts on modifying a conventional Filament Deposition Modelling (FDM) 3D printer is well-thought-out to develop economical 3D bioprinters. While using such custom 3D bioprinters, many factors such as the software used for computer Assisted Design (CAD) models, slicing and generation of movement co-ordinates influence the printability outcome. This study focuses on quantifying the printability of a hybrid hydrogel composed of sodium salt carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) and gelatin using a 3D bioprinter based on RepRap prototyper. The 3D design and the slicing parameters were generated using opensource software and manually edited for good printability. The results of these experiments indicate the importance of printability evaluation of custom bioprinters and provide some key aspects about how to modify CAD design parameters for prinatbility evaluation. This approach can also be adopted to evaluate the printability of other hydrogels for bio-printing.