Shared Experimental Facilities
Aerotech Multi-Material 3-D Printer

The Center recently installed a custom-designed, multi-material 3-D printer (Aerotech). Concentrated viscoelastic inks with a wide range of compositions can be printed with minimum feature sizes ranging from 1-100 μm. The printer is equipped with four independently addressable, print heads that allow up to four different materials to be patterned within a given 3-D structure. This modular design also allows other equipment, including laser profilometers, optical micrometers, volumetric displacement pumps, and in-line laser sintering, to be incorporated. Using this 3-D assembly platform, researchers are able to print a wide range of functional architectures and devices, including fiber-reinforced composites, stimuli responsive structures, flexible electronics, sensors, and soft robots