#qotojournal
I'm a PhD student obsessed with bio-based nanoparticles, so I'm trying my hand at 3D printing seaweed using at-home supplies. The troubleshooting is intense. Creating an at-home lab without funding is VERY HARD. Mashed seaweed was OK to print (with cellulose nanocrystals), but optimization? Yikes. Would love any tips !
@freckled that's very interesting. It makes me think that it should be possible to 3D print paper and cardboard, maybe using a cold extruder depositing a humid cellulose paste inside a oven to eliminate water at a particular rate. The material could also be inyected in metal molds (as in plastic injection) to be heathen afterwards (doesn't that exist already?)
@lmedinar Oh you can ABSOLUTELY do that! 3D printing cellulose is pretty easy (its typically shear-thinning) as long as you get the consistency right. I have already printed seaweed, which realistically is just a cellulosic material that hasn't gone through the extraction steps.
I have 3D printed cellulose nanocrystals (from woodpulp) as gels, but they dry like paper and are very brittle. My first seaweed print was also very brittle. So the goal is to try and make it like some kind of useful, open-source material. The problem is that the concentrations of solid content are less than 10%, so I'd like to get it to the point where 1. the organic hydrogel framework doesn't collapse or 2. the concentration is high enough where even if water evaporates, we don't lose so much volume.
There are some existing materials, but they often add polymers like acrylamides or acrylates, and those monomers aren't so pretty or readily available for an at-home science lab!
(I develop it live on Twitch.tv/freckledscience).
