actress of pakistan

MTM Multifab is truly multifunctional desktop manufacturing machine that was very innovative and ground breaking in the field of  DIY 3d printing when it was developed. Ultimaker, very well known and powerful 3d printer,  is based on this machine.
Multifab has several replaceable tool head options:

• MACHINING SPINDLE, A high-speed (20K RPM) spindle supports light subtractive machining. The spindle can be constructed entirely from off-the-shelf compoents.
• VINYL CUTTER, A razor blade tool which allows 2D cutting of sheet material. Some applications are flexible circuit boards, stickers, silkscreen masks, and more.
• REPEATING PIPETTER, This fluid dispensing toolhead was created in collaboration with MIT's Innovations in International Health program, and has uses in automated biology research and disease diagnostics fabrication.
• PLOTTER HEAD, A pen attached to the multifab can allow easy labeling of objects, caligraphy, etc...
• 5 AXIS TRUNNION, This attachment permits 5-axis machining of components on the Multifab. Potential applications include variabl-helix screws, impellers, and 5-sided machining operations.
• PLASTIC EXTRUDER, Based on the Rep-Rap project, this extrusion head will enable additive manufacturing in plastics such as ABS.

MTM Multifab 3d printing

Here are some videos of Multifab in action writing and pipettering:





Demonstration of the MTM Multifab fitted with an auto-pipetting toolhead. The toolhead was designed with Amber Houghstow and Jose Gomez-Marquez of the MIT Innovations in International Health program, with the goal of automating production of XoutTB diagnostic assays. Perhaps it can also find a use in the DIY Bio community.
The MTM Multifab is part of the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms Machines That Make project.

Here is overview of Multifabs components, tools and development status:


http://mtm.cba.mit.edu/fabinabox/devmultifab.html

The instructions, plans and BOMs should be available for anyone who wants to build it, but all the files and documents links I tried on the site were broken. I hope it will be repaired soon, the public could benefit greatly with this machine.

Fab-in-a-Box

The Multifab is core machine of FAB in a Box framework system that should provide full digital fabrication environment that user could make at their home from simple parts. It contains:

Infrastructure. All of the key services which allow Fab-in-a-Box to be a cohesive toolset. These include the network, the box itself, power distribution, etc. It consist of the:

1. VIRTUAL MACHINE ENVIRONMENT, The flexible Fab-in-a-Box machine control and interface environment.  
2. THE NETWORK: FABNET, An RS485-based network is the nervous system of the toolset, which connects the "brain" - a laptop running control software - to the tools and sensors comprising Fab-in-a-Box. 
3. THE SUITCASE, The suitcase is the heart of the matter. It is what contains the entire fab in a box project.

Multifab. A computer-controlled multipurpose fabrication tool. Work includes integration into the box, the xyz motion stage, and multiple toolheads to perform various fabrication tasks. Multifab has many subsystems, components and parts:

Other Fab. All other tools needed to make something. Examples are the soldering iron, hand tools, and programming interfaces.

Measurement. Networked instrumentation such as a multimeter and oscilloscope. This is one area which will hopefully expand greatly on the road.

1. MULTIMETER, A multimeter which displays and records its readings on the Fab-in-a-Box laptop.
2. OSCILLOSCOPE, An oscilloscope which displays and records its readings on the Fab-in-a-Box laptop.

Autodoc. Everything related to making it possible to document a project "without thought".

1. EYE-FI CAMERA, A camera which wirelessly tranfers its time-stamped images to the Fab-in-a-Box auto-documentation software.
2. RFID READER, Keeping track of which hand tools were used, and when, is made easy with an RFID reader.

Some of the components were never developed, and most of the building related file links can not be opened. Probably all the files are somewhere on the internet, it would be terrible if they get lost forever. I REALLY hope someone publishes them as open source soon.


Here is the Fab-in-a-Box website:

http://mtm.cba.mit.edu/fabinabox/

PDF presentation:

http://mtm.cba.mit.edu/fabinabox/fabinabox.pdf

Printing blood vessels out of sugar at Uni Pennsylvania lab.


From video description:

Bioengineers have been steadily advancing toward the goal of building lab-grown organs out of a patient's own cells, but a few major challenges remain. One of them is making vasculature, the blood vessel plumbing system that delivers nutrients and remove waste from the cells on the inside of a mass of tissue. Without these blood vessels, interior cells quickly suffocate and die.
Scientists can already grow thin layers of cells, so one proposed solution to the vasculature problem is to "print" the cells layer by layer, leaving openings for blood vessels as necessary. But this method leaves seams, and when blood is pumped through the vessels, it pushes those seams apart.
Bioengineers from the University of Pennsylvania have turned the problem inside out by using a 3D printer called a RepRap to make templates of blood vessel networks out of sugar. Once the networks are encased in a block of cells, the sugar can be dissolved, leaving a functional vascular network behind.
"I got the first hint of this solution when I visited a Body Worlds exhibit, where you can see plastic casts of free-standing, whole organ vasculature," says Bioengineering postdoc Jordan Miller.
Miller, along with Christopher Chen, the Skirkanich Professor of Innovation in the Department of Bioengineering, other members of Chen's lab, and colleagues from MIT, set out to show that this method of developing sugar vascular networks helps keep interior cells alive and functioning.
After the researchers design the network architecture on a computer, they feed the design to the RepRap. The printer begins building the walls of a stabilizing mold. Then it then draws filaments across the mold, pulling the sugar at different speeds to achieve the desired thickness of what will become the blood vessels.
After the sugar has hardened, the researchers add liver cells suspended in a gel to the mold. The gel surrounds the filaments, encasing the blood vessel template. After the gel sets it can be removed from the mold with the template still inside. The block of gel is then washed in water, dissolving the remaining sugar inside. The liquid sugar flows out of the vessels it has created without harming the growing cells.
"This new technology, from the cell's perspective, makes tissue formation a gentle and quick journey," says Chen.
The researchers have successfully pumped nutrient-rich media, and even blood, through these gels blocks' vascular systems. They also have experimentally shown that more of the liver cells survive and produce more metabolites in gels that have these networks.
The RepRap makes testing new vascular architectures quick and inexpensive, and the sugar is stable enough to ship the finished networks to labs that don't have 3D printers of their own. The researchers hope to eventually use this method to make implantable organs for animal studies.
Text by Evan Lerner
Video by Kurtis Sensenig

via: http://go3dprinting.tumblr.com/

http://www.upenn.edu/spotlights/rep-rap-3d-printing-blood-vessel-networks

From the source:

By caging bacteria in microscopic houses, scientists at The University of Texas at Austin are studying how communities of bacteria, such as those found in the human gut and lungs, interact and develop infections.
In a recent experiment they demonstrated that a community of Staphylococcus aureus, which can cause some skin infections, became more resistant to antibiotics when it was contained within a larger community of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a bacteria involved in various diseases, including cystic fibrosis.
The work was published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The researchers use a novel 3-D printing technology to build homes for bacteria at a microscopic level. Their method uses a laser to construct protein "cages" around bacteria in gelatin. The resulting structures can be of almost any shape or size, and can be moved around in relationship to other structures containing bacterial microcommunities.
The method should enable an entirely new class of experiments that better approximate the conditions that bacteria encounter in actual biological environments, such as those in the human body.

Source and detailed info:

http://phys.org/news/2013-10-d-scientists-bacterial.html

For those special projects where you need to print something with living cells ...

Project description:

CellStruder is a 20mL syringe extruder powered by a NEMA stepper motor, capable of of precise liquid extrusion at the microliter level. Originally developed in Jeff Tabor's lab at Rice University, this device is currently being used for cell printing, enabling research in synthetic biology, biological pattern formation and engineering of cellular logic. An example print of E. coli cells expressing green fluorescent protein is shown above as well as microscopy of printed cells.

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:109040 by Ravi Sheth