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Making Low Cost Mechanical Sensors with 3D Printing &

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The Engineer posted on February 11, 2015 | Comment | 3131 views

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Imagine printing out molecules that can respond to their

surroundings. A research project at the University of
Washington merges custom chemistry and 3-D printing.
Scientists created a bone-shaped plastic tab that turns
purple under stretching, offering an easy way to record the
force on an object.
At the UW, this is a marriage thats been waiting to

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happen 3-D printing from the engineering side, and

functional materials from the chemistry side, said Andrew
J. Boydston, a UW assistant professor of chemistry. He is corresponding author on a recent paper in the
American Chemical Societys journal of Applied Materials and Interfaces.

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Gregory Peterson and Michael Larsen, UW doctoral students in chemistry, created a polymer, or plastic made up
of many repeated units strung together, and fed the soft plastic into the UW chemistry labs commercial 3-D
printer.

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One print head contained polycaprolactone, similar to what a 3-D printer company sells as Flexible Filament. The
other print head contained a plastic that is 99.5 percent identical but the UW team made occasional insertions of
a molecule, spiropyran, that changes color when it is stretched.
We wanted to demonstrate that the functional chemistry could be incorporated readily into already printable

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materials, Boydston said. We found that designer chemistry can be incorporated into 3-D printing very
rapidly.
The printed tab is a piece of white plastic with barely visible stripes that turn purple under force. It acts as an

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inexpensive, mechanical sensor with no electronic parts. The whole device took about 15 minutes to print from
materials that cost less than a dollar.

http://www.engineering.com/3DPrinting/3DPrintingArticles/ArticleID/9564/Making-Low-... 17-Feb-15

Making Low Cost Mechanical Sensors with 3D Printing & Molecules > ENGINEERING.... Page 2 of 3

The sensor might be used to record force or strain on a building or other structure. Boydston would like to
develop a sensor that also records the speed of the force, or impact, which could allow for a football helmet that
changes color when hit with sufficient force.
The project is part of a recent collaboration between Boydstons group and co-authorsMark Ganter and Duane
Storti, UW mechanical engineers who have developed new 3-D printing materials and techniques.
Different instructions can program the machine to print
the plastics in any configuration with the color-changing
part in stripes in the middle, completely encased in the
other plastic, or in any other desired shape.

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Boydston specializes in organic synthesis, or, in his words:
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It means making more complex molecules from simpler,

more available ones.

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Varying how the plastic is made could yield molecules that respond in different ways.
Maybe the material isnt currently under stress, but it had been several times prior to your observing it. And so

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these types of materials could record that load history, Boydston said.

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Boydston will continue collaborating with Ganter and Storti, to plan and create more 3-D printed objects that
incorporate designer molecules. The 3-D printing technology offers new possibilities, he said, for individualized

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This is definitely an area that we want to continue to expand into, Boydston said.

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Making Low Cost Mechanical Sensors with 3D Printing & Molecules > ENGINEERING.... Page 3 of 3

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