Project Goal
As one of the most important scaffoldings in human tissues, researchers have spent years investigating the potential of bio-fabricating collagen. However, collagen fabrication has been highly challenging due to its fragile structure, weak mechanical properties and its highly hydrated nature. Our client, Prof. Showan Nazhat and his research team, has made a breakthrough in developing a gel aspiration and ejection system (GAE) for the advanced production and delivery of injectable dense collagen (I-DC) gels of unique collagen fibrillar densities (CFDs)[1]. The goal of this project is thus to automate the GAE process with a simple control system for the pump system in fabricating desired collagen concentration at a low cost. The approach to achieve the necessary movements needed for the GAE process is by integrating with a current Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) printer鈥檚 frame. Since the real-time measurement of output (collagen concentration) is not feasible within the project scope, pump control is thus achieved using a feedforward loop based on the data provided from the client鈥檚 research.
[1] Kamranpour, N. O., Miri, A. K., James-Bhasin, M., & Nazhat, S. N. (2016). A gel aspiration-ejection system for the controlled production and delivery of injectable dense collagen scaffolds. Biofabrication, 8(1), 015018.
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Team
颁濒颈别苍迟:听Prof. Showan Nazhat
Academic advisor:听Dr. Alexei Morozov
Student team:听Shirley (Guanbingxue) Huang
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Award
The project was awarded first place Mechanical Engineering Project Award at 苹果淫院 Design Day 2022.听