abstract
- Melt electrowriting (MEW) has become a novel technique for textile (scaffold) biomanufacturing of Tissue Engineering scaffolds which, once they are combined with cells, we refer to them as biotextiles. The accuracy of weaving resorbable polymer fibers provides paradigmatic advances over electrospinning. This innovation in MEW allows control of pore geometry, mechanical properties, and overall geometries, especially the ability to bring two thin membranes formed from different, complementary types of cells as occurs in the key areas of most tissues. The biofabrication of large surfaces (i.e., high surface areas) where two or more types of cells are in very thin membranes in direct contact is unprecedented. One of the main challenges is to learn how to tame the MEW process parameters to biomanufacture personalized textiles with geometries other than the scaffolds produced with the well-demonstrated flat sheet and straight tube collectors. Why? Because no tissue within the human body takes the form of a flat sheet or straight tube. In this work, we show the challenges involved in translating MEW to the printing of textiles with out-of-plane geometries and validated a promising multi-axis kinematic strategy to orthogonally aligned the printing nozzle to them. Of particular interest to us is the effect of the fiber collector geometry on the electric field (i.e., inhomogeneities not seen with flat sheet and straight tube collectors) and thus in fiber deposition accuracy. The benefit of applying multi-axis CAM methodologies and the use of a digital twin to assist in MEW biomanufacturing is also validated. We believe these advances will unleash the imagination of people working with MEW for novel applications in Regenerative Medicine. © 2024 The Authors.