A versatile 5-axis melt electrowriting platform for unprecedented design freedom of 3D fibrous scaffolds

Melt electrowriting (MEW) is an electrohydrodynamic additive manufacturing technology for the fabrication of precise microfiber scaffold architectures but is so far restricted to printing onto simple collector geometries and, therefore, constrained in design freedom. This is due to current limitations in print head designs, kinematic systems, and software to generate motion commands. We address these aspects by upgrading a low-cost 5-axis kinematic system and complete it with a custom-designed print head and a collector fabrication workflow to enable collision-free MEW onto arbitrarily shaped multicurvature 3D geometries. A universal graphical approach enables generation of Gcodes customized to the 5-axis MEW requirements. The print head is validated by producing polycaprolactone fibers with diameters ranging from 5.6 +/- 1.7 mu m to 50.7 +/- 5.5 mu m and by writing both linear and non-linear fiber patterns onto collectors featuring concave and convex surfaces. Stable printing conditions are achieved by continuously reorienting the print head and collector surface perpendicular to each other at a constant working distance. Ultimately, we demonstrate the system's potential in shaping anatomically relevant scaffold geometries by stacking microfibers onto collectors resembling a trileaflet valve and a bifurcating vessel. This multi-axis MEW platform unlocks exciting avenues towards unprecedented design freedom for MEW scaffolds.