| Summary: | 碩士 === 長庚大學 === 機械工程研究所 === 94 === Tissue engineering is a combination of material science and bioscience. The main aim of tissue engineering is to grow tissue or organs externally outside the body is to overcome current problems of organ transplant like organ shortage, organ rejection, have to take drugs for long periods to suppress organ rejection, high risk of infection, etc.
Tissue engineering must comprise of 3 important elements; scaffold, cell and signal. The purpose of this research is to study the technical difficulties related to the fabrication of tissue scaffold. In order to grow the tissue scaffold, we need to first fabricate a tissue scaffold of the same shape. Hence, the success of the tissue scaffold fabrication will determine the success of the tissue scaffold fabrication.
When designing the tissue scaffold, we need to consider factors such as pore diameter, pore density and structural strength. According to research done by ITRI (Industrial Technology Research Institute), if the design of the tissue scaffold is not good, it will result in poor formation of the tissue scaffold. This in turn will result in the poor adhesion of the cells during initial formation stage. The resulting implant will face problems related to structural strength. In addition, the traditional method of making tissue scaffold is through molding. This process involves the use of chemicals to carve out the pores. However, if there is residue remaining in the pores of the mold, it would lack biocompatibility. Moreover, another disadvantage of using the traditional molding method is that there is a limit to structural complexity. In order to overcome the shortcomings of the traditional molding method, this research proposes a new method of using laser sintering to make tissue scaffold. The scope of this research includes the hardware design of the “laser sintering rapid prototyping” machine, computer aided design (CAD) file slicing and laser sintering profile path programming. Lastly, this research will also use the “laser sintering rapid prototyping” machine to test out its feasibility.
This research comprises of 3 different stages. First stage is the hardware design of the “laser sintering rapid prototyping” machine. The hardware design includes capability study and design guidelines for this machine. Using Solidworks for function design, platform for tissue scaffold fabricator, CO2 laser module and air pressure-damper module design, control of the circuit using Galil motion control card. Second stage is the design of CAD file slicing interface , laser sintering profile path programming interface and human-machine interface software design. This would involve using CopyCAD and Visual Basic to design the software window platform for CAD file slicing, using PowerMill and Visual Basic to design the software window platform for laser sintering profile path programming and using Visual Basic to design the human-machine interface software window platform. Third stage is to combine the “laser sintering rapid prototyping” machine with CAD file slicing module and laser sintering profile path programming to build the physical system. This includes the testing of both hardware and software of the machine. Lastly, to test the system by building actual tissue scaffolds.
This research uses “copolymer bone cement” to successfully build 6 different types of tissue scaffolds; 0/90 deg, 30/60 deg, 45/135 deg, 0/90 deg hexagonal shape, 45/135 deg circular shape and 0/90 deg triangular shape. This proves that the “laser sintering rapid prototyping” system can be used to test out more shapes and structural designs of the tissue scaffold by changing the pore diameter and pore density.
The “laser sintering rapid prototyping” system in this research combines CAD file slicing and laser sintering profile path programming techniques to produce that is capable of using 2-D layer slicing and controlling different filament gap or pore shape, the “laser sintering rapid prototyping” machine can make different pore diameters and pore density. This machine proves that this creative technique is feasible for rapid prototyping for tissue scaffolds. Hence, paving the way for new scaffold designs and fabrication methods.
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