Design and development of a low-cost 3D bio-printer

3-D printers are devices that allow us to make a product that we design in a virtual environment a reality, or create one-to-one copies of existing objects. This technology, which is rapidly becoming widespread today, attracts the attention of almost every segment. It is a system that some see as just a hobby, and others see as a suitable method for supplying materials. Recently, interest in classic 3-D printers as well as 3-D bio printers has increased a lot. People's dream of eliminating various problems, especially for humans, such as the lack of tissue and organ donors, waiting for a harmonious organ sequence, and the adaptation of found organs to the body, contributes to the development of this sector. Because of the cost of 3-D printers, especially in recent years, people's desire to make their own 3-D printers has also increased. Although there are not yet widely desired bio printers, it has become exciting for all of us to produce our own printer in general. Both costs and difficulty finding resources make some problems insurmountable. Despite all this, by obtaining some of the necessary materials from another 3-D printer, both the difficulties of supplying materials can be overcome and the cost can be significantly reduced. In this study, a new low-cost 3D bio printer was produced. A new 3-D bio printer has been produced with prints from a classic 3D printer and the Marlin software, which has been made available to everyone as open source. The extruder part of the manufactured printer is designed as a syringe pump. All of the extruder part designed was prepared in a virtual environment with Autocad Fusion application and printed from a 3-D printer. Arduino Mega 2560 and Ramp 1.6 cards were used for printer controls. Marlin software was made compatible for the bio printer and installed on the cards and the system was calibrated and brought to the final form where printing could be done. Some tests were also carried out with alginate-gelatin solutions prepared with certain percentages and hand cream to check whether the system was working efficiently. As a result of the tests, it has been shown that this printer is a 3-D bio printer that can be printed with the desired quality. As a result, the production cost was significantly reduced by the methods used to produce a bio printer with a cost of about 2,000₺.