Viscoelastic ink printing is used in research labs around the world, using inks consisting of hydrogels, ceramics, cell-laden extracellular matrices, epoxy resins, and other advanced materials to create products as varied as vascular tissue and batteries. Printing with multiple types of materials, however, has long been a challenge, particularly so for delicate print jobs. Researchers out of Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, recently published a paper in Advanced materials in which they establish a method allowing for 3D printing utilizing two viscoelastic inks from one microfluid print head. The researchers--James O. Hardin, Thomas J. Ober, Alexander D. Valentine, and Jennifer A. Lewis--created a print head shaped like a capital "T" sitting on a pedestal, where either end of the top bar of the T-shape houses an individually controlled syringe pump allowing for smooth transitioning between two materials. Find out more about this innovative research in the full article: http://3dprint.com/59616/3d-print-viscoelastic-inks/


Below is an image from the research paper describing the technique: