Multidisciplinary artist and wooden boatbuilder,
interested in memory and interfaces.
Former partner at
Bede-Fazekas & Kozak in Budapest, Hungary
Currently attending ITP @ NYU.
Multidisciplinary artist and wooden boatbuilder,
interested in memory and interfaces.
Former partner at
Bede-Fazekas & Kozak in Budapest, Hungary
Currently attending ITP @ NYU.
Bioprinting
ITP NYU
Wood-printing: methods and definitions
As a first foray into the world of bioprinting, I chose to look at a paper on the subject of wood-printing. As a former boatbuilder, I’m highly aware of the challenges that the decimation of old-growth forests have meant for all industries that depend on wood. High-quality wood is extremely hard to find, or is scarce and from sketchy origins. There’s also the environmental considerations that flow from wood-harvesting, and our inability to do so responsibly.
In a way, it’s the maximum irony that we’re having to invent how to literally *print* wood instead of just learning and regulating woodcutting in a competent way.
The paper Physical, mechanical, and microstructural characterization of novel, 3D-printed, tunable, lab-grown plant materials generated from Zinnia elegans cell cultures by Ashley Beckwith (Foray Bio) and collaborators, details how Zinia elegans meristem (plant “stem cells”) are made to differenciate (into structural plant cells) by altering the ratio of two hormones (NAA and BAP) in a medium. These cells are given time to differentiate (about a week) before they are extruded into the desire shape using a Tissue Scribe printer.
Once printed, the cells are allowed to grow, sometimes for months. Finally, they are dehydrated, at which point what remains is the wood itself. It’s important to note that this wood does not contain all the elements we’d normally find in “real” wood. For example, medulary rays are absent, given that the cells to create them are never really differentiated in the process. That said, the approach is concerned mainly with replicating the structural properties of wood in an organic end-product, and aesthetics doesn’t land within the value-proposition of businesses in this space.
We then spoke to Tom Clement of New Dawn Bio, a Dutch start-up also focusing on wood printing. He has developed a different approach which guarantees a 4x improvement in differentiation efficiency, and a 3x improvement in speed-to-print.