bioPrint was develop for Bacillus Subtillis endospore deposition. Compared with other bioprinters used in biolabs today, our printer has a number of distinct functions that have been customized for our specific needs: clogging is prevented through the use of a special progressive pump-based dispenser; the printer has fast movement; it prints with a relatively low resolution of a hundred microns rather than at a submicron resolution, since the application we focused on was at human scale; it does not need a controlled sterile environment, since we do not expect the spores to grow once the film has been produced. bioPrint contains off-the-shelf hardware components and a software platform developed on top of open source plugins. bioPrint was designed with a few primary goals in mind: an easy work flow, starting from geometric design to G-code generation, to machine control to material fabrica- tion; a high-precision deposition system for droplets ranging in width from 10 um up to 5mm; suitability for a large set of diverse user groups, including designers, artists, and scientists.
We developed a standard, easy-to-follow process to prepare the printing solution. The optical density, which is directly related to the cell density, is critical for the printing success.
