ABSTRACT
The concept of the three-dimensional (3D) printing (3DP) has evolved in the early 1970s, when Pierre A. L. Ciraud suggested using high energy beam for the solidification of the layer, primarily the application of the powdered material. 3DP is a technique in which a 3D object is fabricated by either depositing or fusing plastic, powder, ceramics, metals, and biomedical devices such as implants, prosthetics, stents, or even biological living tissue cells and is known as additive manufacturing (AM) or rapid prototyping technique [1]. 3DP has enabled us to a high level of customization as per the requirement in various biomedical fields such as pharmaceutical, medicine, artificial organs, bioscaffolding, and so on [2]. Figure 7.1 shows the schematic representation of the four fundamental categories of the 3DP. Fused deposition modeling (FDM) is a layer-by-layer material deposition process of fabricating 149a 3D object with the help of extruder [3]. The filament material is melted in the nozzle, and soften material is forced to extrude out from the nozzle end on the build tray as shown in Figure 7.1a. In this way, 3D structures are fabricated using different materials such as acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) and polylactic acid (PLA). Direct ink writing (DIW) works on the same principle as of FDM.
