Engineers repurpose a mosquito proboscis to create a 3D printing nozzle

From the paper:

> The ink used for the proof of extrusion demonstration is a ready-to-use, polyethylene oxide–based training bioink purchased and used directly from the vendor (Cellink Start, Cellink)

> The ink used for the honeycomb demonstration and the maple leaf demonstration is a sacrificial, temperature-sensitive, 40% (w/v) Pluronic F-127 in deionized water bioink purchased and used directly from the vendor (Pluronic F-127, Allevi).

> The ink used for the first cell-laden grid demonstration is Pluronic F-127 bioink with B16 cancer cells suspended in solution.

> The ink used for the second cell-laden grid demonstration is Pluronic F-127 bioink embedded with RBCs.

> The ink used for the cell viability experiments is Pluronic F-127 bioink with B16 cancer cells suspended in solution.

From TFA, they're using it to print bioinks. Think scaffolding for cell cultures.

At these kinds of physical scales, biology is almost certainly a much larger market than mechanical applications. A 20 um line width (slightly less than one thou for US folks) is certainly a tolerance you might encounter on a drawing for subtractive manufacturing, but for addative, feature sizes that small will be strength limited.

"They mounted the mosquito proboscis on a standard dispensing tip and used it to deposit specialized bioinks.", "They then successfully printed bioscaffolds used to support cell growth and high-resolution microstructures".

Tissue-printing type stuff, not plastic

Reminds me of something from Warhammer 40k universe. Next someone is going to put ChatGPT helper inside a human skull, probably :V

hopefully the name will stick, as it realy is ,,ominous and spectacular ,,and will get people thinking about what might come next