Bioprinter

While working on my doctorate at Texas A&M University, I worked on a huge variety of biofabrication projects, and I quickly found that I was better off designing my own bioprinters over any of the commercial bioprinters I had on hand. Now I run Hill Country Bioprinters as a project for sharing my bioprinters with the research community.

The cellprinter series is designed around motor driven volumetric extrusion, which uses computer controlled stepper motors to drive a plunger, similar a syringe pump. This approach takes much of the guesswork out of bioprinting since bioinks are extruded by volume, rather than by air pressure over time as in traditional extrusion systems. This allows bioprinting with more complex non-newtonian bioinks that cannot be reliably printed using a pneumatic system, and does away with requiring an external air supply.

The cellprinter series is designed to be lightweight and portable for use both on the bench and in cell culture hoods, and the printer can be sterilized with UV, Alcohol, or bleach solutions (The control box should remain outside of the cell culture hood).

Finally, Cellprinters run entirely on open source software, allowing researchers to control and customize their prints using the full range of open source software, and even create their own custom firmware. Hill Country Bioprinters is committed to bringing an open source approach to the field of bioprinting.