Gels, soft and wet materials, have unique properties such as material permeability, biocompatibility and low friction, which are hardly found in hard and dry materials. These superior characteristics of hydrogels promise to expand the medical applications. In recent years, the optical 3D gel printer named SWIM-ER (Soft and Wet Industrial – Easy Realizer) was developed by our team in order to fabricate tough gels with free form. We are aiming to create artificial blood vessel of the gel material by 3D gel printer. Artificial blood vessel is expected to be used for vascular surgery practice. The artificial blood vessel made by 3D gel printer can be create to free form on the basis of the biological data of the patient. Therefore, we believe it is possible to contribute to increasing the success rate and safety of vascular surgery by creating artificial blood vessel with 3D gel printer. The modeling method of SWIM-ER is as follow. Pregel solution is polymerized by one-point UV irradiation with optical fiber. The irradiation area is controlled by computer program, so that exact 3D free forming is realized. In this study, synthesis conditions are re-examined in order to improve the degree of freedom of fabrication. The dimensional accuracy in height direction is improved by increasing the cross linker concentration. We examined the relationship of resolution to the pitch and UV irradiation time in order to improve the modeling accuracy.

Date Published: 1 April 2015
PDF: 6 pages
Proc. SPIE 9433, Industrial and Commercial Applications of Smart Structures Technologies 2015, 94330X (1 April 2015); doi: 10.1117/12.2084150

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9433:
Industrial and Commercial Applications of Smart Structures Technologies 2015
Kevin M. Farinholt; Steven F. Griffin, Editor(s)