On the intrinsic sterility of 3D printing
1
Genome Center, UC Davis, Davis, USA
2
Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
3
BEACON Center, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA
4
Department of Biology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
5
Pivot BIo, San Francisco, CA, USA
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Bioengineering, Biotechnology, Microbiology
- Keywords
- 3D printing, cell culture, microbiology, sterile technique, methods, PLA, polylactic acid, pasteurization
- Copyright
- © 2014 Neches et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2014. On the intrinsic sterility of 3D printing. PeerJ PrePrints 2:e542v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.542v1
Abstract
3D printers that build objects using extruded thermoplastic are quickly becoming common place tools in laboratories. We demonstrate that with appropriate handling, these devices are capable of producing sterile components from a non-sterile feedstock of thermoplastic without any treatment after fabrication. The fabrication process itself results in sterilization of the material. The resulting 3D printed components are suitable for a wide variety of applications, including experiments with bacteria and cell culture.
Author Comment
This manuscript is under review at PeerJ.