This was an ambitious multi-disciplinary project.

 

Professor Mike Fraser’s acoustic printing group first employed me as a post-doctoral research associate to look into commercialisation routes for an acoustic printing device.

The group had been developing tools based on ultrasound for bioprinting and particle sorting applications. To support its development, I developed electronics to precisely control the acoustic transducers of the patterning devices.

 

In tandem, I started to research applications for non-plastic prints using couscous. My motivation stemmed from the fact that most 3D prints are used in some sort of prototyping and have a useful lifespan which can sensibly be measured in minutes or hours.

 

At present, only 10% of 3D printing materials are recycled. My idea was that if you could eat your failed prototype in a salad or throw it into the compost, then this would be a marked improvement over trying to recycle PLA or ABS plastics.

 

I also designed a set of experiments to investigate the safety of ultrasonic devices with regard to hearing. This involved building a robotic positioning rig to precisely place a microphone to measure the sound field surrounding the acoustic array.