Stereolithography 3D Printing of Poly(D,L-Lactide)

Stereolithography 3D printing (STL) shows great potential for the fabrication of bioengineered parts, where design fidelity and high detail resolution are required. In STL a liquid resin is selectively photo-polymerized in a layer by layer fashion in order to fabricate the desired solid object. Research in this area can benefit from the growing number of low-cost desktop printers made commercially available, but it is still hindered by the lack of biocompatible resins. As part of our research on biofabrication, we focused on the formulation of a poly(D,L-lactide) (PDLLA) based resin and its application on a low-cost STL printer.