Affordabe printable biomaterials - where to get from?

Hi

I see a lot of discussion here about printing tissues organs etc....
Most discussed material is PCL (aka polycaprolactone, CAPA, polymporph). To my knowledge it is hard wax (at RT) like
material so I really doubt if anybody of forum participants have got a reel of pure PCL filament and printed. If I'm wrong please share your experience here.
Other popular choices in tissue engineering world are PLA (polylactic acid) and PGA (polyglicolic acid) if we are not discussing gel like exotics like alginate, hyaluronan, chitosan etc.
If you plan to make something biocompatible and usable in the medical or at least vetetinary practice, you must have clean
medical grade raw materials. The question is where to get these at affordable prices? In RapMan community it is common to use PLA from BFB, RepRapsource or Orbitech. These guys are only reselers or filament producers at most. Actual material they use, is produced by the worlds largest PLA manufacturer Nature Works LLC. NW does not disclose material purity or composition, just a technological info. Manufacturers price is 3 eur/kg in bulk quantities and 6 eur/kg with VAT at retail. Materials we put in our machines are PLA 4043D or 4032D, why they were choosen by filament producers remains unknown, althoug other PLA from Natureworks is pretty similar in characteristics. If you have some knowledge about that please do not hesitate to share here.
Turning back to organ printing matters it is hard to get medical grade PLA or PGA in quantities and form we need for printing. There are some suppliers of medical polymers like Purac.com , but prices reach the sky. Once you mention word medical - everything become 10x priced like it was gold plated, albeit was taken from the same garage same box like industrial instrument or material. I do not want to overgeneralize that statement, since many times medical grade materials have justified prices. But just want to learn those rare sources of materials where we can get clean material at reasonable prices. Any thoughts welcome.

Andrius Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hi
>
> I see a lot of discussion here about printing
> tissues organs etc....
> Most discussed material is PCL (aka
> polycaprolactone, CAPA, polymporph). To my
> knowledge it is hard wax (at RT) like
> material so I really doubt if anybody of forum
> participants have got a reel of pure PCL filament
> and printed. If I'm wrong please share your
> experience here.

I do have a reel of PCL and I have printed with it: [hydraraptor.blogspot.com] It is a lot harder than wax at room temperature but it is softer than HDPE.

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

hi nophead
thank you for the input
it seems that we are talking about similar materials but surely not same
Mine is from Sigma Aldrich #440752 - it's not springy or plastic in any way although it melts at 60 deg.C

As far as I know it was pure polycaprolactone and technically it is plastic at room temp as the glass transition is -60C. A thick lump of it is pretty solid like a block of HDPE, but once you get down to 3mm filament it is flexible.

---

[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

PCL comes in varying molecular weights with consistencies that vary from modeling clay to hard plastic.
The harder stuff is available in filament and pellets; the softer stuff is usually in flakes or powder form.

For testing in the lab, we us PLA for the prototypes and PCL for the final prototype. For stuff that is
actually being implanted we have an outside medical device manufacturer generate the PCL parts.
While RepRap creates the PCL parts fine, the lawyers insist that the outside company reduces our
chances for lawsuits.

"the lawyers insist that the outside company reduces our
chances for lawsuits. "

you mean that you have a GMP compliant contractor?

How much do they charge per built or weight (100gr)?

what molecular weiht PCL they use to make your scaffolds?

Any additives like HA and TCP added?

St. Jude Research Medical Device Division is our outside GMP contractor.
They are using a medical grade PCL with a molecular weight of 120,000,
the parts are manufactured in an inert atmosphere, cleaned with sterile water,
vacuumed sealed, packaged, gamma irradiated, and delivered to us completely sterile.

The cost for all of that is around $10,000 (USD) per kg.

Usually the PCL we use does have calcium additives to it.
I'm pretty sure their PCL comes from Sigma-Aldrich. I think their
HA and/or TCP comes from Alfa Aesar.

I'm having trouble finding any 1.75 mm PCL filaments for sale. The companies that I've found mentioned in this forum have gone out of business or do not sell the filament any longer. Please help!

Creative Tools out of Germany is still selling the 1.75mm
[www.creativetools.se]
135 Euro
I'm sure that there are others.
Last time I had to print with it, I had to extrude my own filament from granuals.