Hemdeep (00:09)
Welcome to Big Ideas in Microscale, the podcast where we explore groundbreaking research happening at the microscale where our innovations make a big impact. We're excited to showcase the incredible work being done by our users, micro innovation around the world. Who are pushing the boundaries of microfluidics, lab on the chip, organ on the chip, and beyond. Through these conversations, we hope to learn from their experience, cover their insight, and bring their big ideas to wider audience. So whether in a lab, on the go, or just curious about the future of microtechnology, join us as we dive into big ideas at Microscale.

Hemdeep (00:59)
Welcome back to Big Ideas in Microscale. I'm Hemdeep, your host and co-founder of Creative CAD Works, CADworks 3D, and Resin Works 3D. Sadly, today I will not be joined by my co-host Robin. She is currently settling up in her new life in Alberta, but she will be back to join us in our future episodes. In today's episode, we're diving deeper into the innovative work of the Sparks Group at AbbVie. a team dedicated to curiosity-driven research and rapid problem solving. Last week we met Drew, Anne and John and learned how this unique skunkworks team thrives on organized chaos, tackling cross-disciplinary challenges to build prototypes and tools that accelerate scientific discovery within AbbVie. If you missed that conversation, we definitely recommend going back to catch it. You'll hear how diverse backgrounds in fluid dynamics, microfabrication, and mechanical design all came together to form a powerhouse of collaboration. This week, we're turning our focus on to the team's most transformative tools, 3D printing. We'll hear how a hesitant start turned into a full suite of printers enabling rapid iteration and custom-built instrumentation. We'll also get an inside look at their flagship project, the iBeacon, a groundbreaking microfluidic device capable of measuring protein solutions with just two microliters of material, something no off-the-shelf tool has ever achieved. Let's jump right back into Big Ideas at Microscale.

Hemdeep (02:44)
Let's take the 3D View. When was year one of your collaboration and then what does that look like in terms of, you now have a 3D printer, you guys are doing some interesting things. Why don't we start that journey with the 3DView and your current collaboration?

Drew (03:00)
We can start with John. John sort of just introduced our group to 3D printing. He brought in the first 3D printers. Anne and I have been collaborating on the CADWORKS printer. So like overall John's 3D printing big picture and Anne and I are 3D printing but specific, like focused.

Hemdeep (03:26)
ok Perfect. If you guys can just tell me what that looks like in terms of that first collaboration and then what are the mandates between the three of you for this project that you're currently working on and we can sort of peel away the layers of that one as well.

John (03:41)
Perhaps it's helpful to start broad and go specific? Yeah. I actually brought in the second 3D printer that this group has had. The first one was brought in several years before I knew about Sparks or had ever heard of this company. And it was a pretty comprehensive failure from the stories that I have been told. It was a powder-based printer. ⁓ I think it was an SLS style printer. And it made things out of cornstarch that were water soluble and was apparently a giant mess, an incredible pain. I honestly don't know who made the printer or really anything more than I've shared so far, but it really soured the taste in everyone in the script's mouth for the concept of 3D printing because the mechanical engineers who were here and comprised the group at the time were all from... backgrounds that were heavily reliant on machining practices, you know, your traditional CNC based tooling, guess, tooling in general and CNC later. But when I mentioned 3D printing, because that was something that I've had at every stop along the way, internships in school and grad school and my previous job, every time there was always a 3D printer in the room or in the lab next door that I could just kind of walk over to, click play and get my little prototype, it's my three-dimensional scratch paper of sorts. And I wanted that here. So I asked for it and they told me all these horrible stories and I said, all right, let's just try it anyway. So I just, bought a relatively cheap fuse filament fabrication printer and over the span of a year, talked them into using it. There were more resistance from some parties than others. But yeah, eventually that that turned into, there's enough people using this that we're forming a decent queue. Let's get another one. And that turned into, well, what else can we do with these things? And so we ventured on over and got an SLA machine and then a bigger SLA machine. And then it kind of expanded from there to the point where I think we've got eight, nine machines now of different manufacturers, different capabilities, but for the most part, they're SLA and FFF. But yeah, that's kind of how this all started and evolved over the first few years here of just transitioning the group into 3D printing. Later on, once it had become established, we started getting some of the machines that could do the finer details, which is a lot of what Drew and Anne have been working on together. I'll let you guys kind of talk more about that.

Drew (06:17)
Yeah. I'll also just add to John's comment. Time is really the only resource that we value. And if we can iterate on something three times in one week, that is priceless. And so whatever the cost of the printer is, the printer is paid for themselves immediately. Can the printer solve all of our problems? No, of course not. But if there's use cases for the printers that the printer solve immediately. And then we can learn faster. Like Anne said, she has a prototype the next morning that she can use and that she is now getting data from. And in John's case, John needs a whole bunch of different brackets, say. But they're all custom brackets, and they're all holding on to things in different ways. John can make those brackets way faster. and way cheaper on a printer than it would take a machine shop to build them. So the time aspect is also really critical for us.

Hemdeep (07:25)
And how about you, Drew, do you think, have a possible application of what it was old school compared to new school. Now that you have a printer, obviously your workflow has changed. But in terms of development now, what values do you find in that?

Drew (07:42)
For me, the quick turnaround time is the most valuable point for me. And before, also did have a strong resistance to use 3D printing to make micro-Bluetooth device. I tried before when I was in the grad school, and the technology at that time was not up to date yet. So it's hard to make small channels, and it took through a little bit of a time to convince me that, the new printer that we get our group is going to be able to do what we need. And then I work closely with Drew and then I figure, ⁓ it's actually good enough for our prototyping purpose. And I'm enjoying using 3D printing so far. I got to add to that too. So, is very humble. It's not like 3D printing is replacing these traditional microfabrication techniques. It's enhancing them. So Anne is actually combining microfabrication techniques and 3D printing techniques and combining them in single devices that previously have never been made. The conversation should never be like, 3D printing has replaced microfabrication. 3D printing has replaced traditional machining. Absolutely not. We use it to enhance each technique. So we've combined microfabrication and 3D printing with combined machining and 3D printing to make it better than the sum of their parts. Does that make sense?

Hemdeep (09:17)
And I think the stories the three of you have are the ones that we always hear where iteration cycles have increased. They've been able to ⁓ leverage 3D printing with the existing microfabrication techniques and that the first uptake for 3D printing is usually a story of a platform that did not work, didn't deliver something that they had wanted, therefore they were sour. And then it required this another, you know, almost a big leap of faith to sort of say, okay, I think I'll try it again. And then you start seeing the wheels of idea make, it just evolves very, very quickly. Once you've got that wheel going, it really has a momentum of its own.

Drew (10:03)
Right? And it's also about choosing the right problem. For sure. So 3D printing is a tool. So apply that tool to the problem that it's most applicable for.

Hemdeep (10:13)
I'm going to sort of touch on this and I sort of touching on it on more broadly based. I know there things that you're not able to divulge because you're currently working on it, but perhaps you guys can sort of put a thread and then connect all that together. In terms of 3D printing that you have deployed in your group, what would be the current project that you're working on and what other techniques or tools are you combining together in order to right now. provide a solution for your scientist meeting? Obviously 3D printing would be one. And then what other technologies are you combining together for a deliverable solution? for your scientists.

Drew (10:52)
So the instrument that combines everything that we've sort of been circling around is the iBeacon instrument. The heart of the iBeacon instrument is a flow channel that is complex to manufacture. It spans a wide variety of scales. So we have microchannels, but we also have large length scale features that are critical as well. And that print after it comes out of the printer still needs to be post-processed using a variety of different manufacturing techniques. And then even more different stuff is happening later to the block, I guess, to the instrument to make the end product ⁓ usable. So do you want to talk about that? This is the thing that comes out of your printer. And we have a very

Hemdeep (11:44)
That'd be fantastic.

Drew (11:52)
tiny 300 micron diameter downspouts, I guess. So we have micro channels in there. We have sensor holes in there. Optical clarity is critical. Surface roughness is critical. And it's all got to print. This takes up the entire build volume of a CADWORKS. So we need the resolution that particular instrument offers, but we're also maximizing our volume. And so to get those two things to work takes settings that Anne sits down and painstakingly ⁓ tries to figure out. We've had to modify our printers mechanically. Anne has modified the settings and the parameters for the prints. So I guess if we wanted to talk about that, there's that thing that actually is tying together. Everything from micro-fab all the way to milling. It's everything. Everything goes into this instrument.

Hemdeep (12:57)
I'm very curious about that. I've got a half a million questions about that. First of all, if I was to ask just the visual that you gave me, can you tell me how many individual devices are integrated in that? a device would be a single channel that would go across, because that is a point of interaction between two parts. You can interact two parts. If you were to say how many channels are going through there, how many different parts and features do you have within that one device?

Drew (13:25)
The two main channels are vertical. They come down. Those are 300 micron diameter channels. Those meet at the bottom. There will be a fluid channel, an open-faced fluid channel here that has 68 micron diameter fiber optics embedded in it. That's separate.

Hemdeep (13:45)
Okay. And that would be milled in place, correct?

Drew (13:48)
Nope, that's cast in epoxy and then machined with a femtosecond laser. Wow. OK. OK. These are liquid level sensor ports here. This is threaded features for fiber protection. There's cooling channels. There's insulation channels. There's alignment features. There's mounting features. That's... It's complex.

Hemdeep (14:14)
You've piqued my interest significantly. You can tell me anything and everything you'd like to about that device. What is the application for that device? Is it a biological application, chemical application, a undisclosed application? You tell me.

Drew (14:27)
Okay, so this is the heart of an instrument that is used to measure the viscosity and the concentration of a protein solution. Okay. The viscosity of a drug determines how painful it is to inject. So you're optimizing viscosity and concentration typically. Like effectiveness also matters. I mean, that's the only thing that matters.

John (14:53)
Yeah, that's key detail.

Drew (14:57)
But you can get to effectiveness in multiple different combinations. So do you need a large volume injection dose at a lower viscosity, or can you get away with a high concentration dose at a higher viscosity? Like viscosity equals pain or correlates to pain. So high viscosity is more painful than low viscosity. So this device measures protein concentration and viscosity. But it does it with very small Volumes like it can go down to two microliter volumes of your sample. So it's truly micro scale Okay, and that's critical because in early drug discovery, you don't have a lot of sample Right. So proteins are hard to manufacture. I don't know I don't I've never made one but I imagine they're difficult because in early drug discovery you have a very small amount It's very small mass. And so you have to take that precious solution and then conduct these tests. And then either keep them for further testing, or you can just get rid of them. So in early drug discovery, we have small amount of fluid that's super precious that we need to conduct all of these measurements on. And this instrument is being developed to do that. So the 3D printed part has a couple of different requirements. It needs to be super smooth. It needs to be super small. The fluid channels need to be small. There needs to be optical clarity. It needs to be mountable, rigid. And then we have to mount the sensor on the bottom. So when we integrate the sensor on the bottom of this block, we have tried to 3D print it in the past. So this is it all integrated all in one thing. It's not coming in the video, but we'll get a picture of that. So we can integrate this sensor in 3D printing, but there's trade-offs if we do it one way the other. So the current way is what we're doing. ⁓

Hemdeep (17:03)
Does this block fit into an existing apparatus or are you also building the apparatus that you are using to do the further testing or evaluation of these programs?

Drew (17:15)
This block is a custom block that fits into a custom machine. ⁓ wow. So it's all custom. There are commercially available components that are on the instrument, like a liquid handler, pumps, regulators, and things like that. So you can buy the components for the instrument. But it's all combined in a custom way.

Hemdeep (17:37)
And if we were to connect it back to a previous conversation, it's not a commercial venture. This is to address an issue or a problem that has been identified within the team at AbbVie and you've been tasked to find a solution for it.

Drew (17:54)
Right, this instrument does not exist. You cannot buy it. Merck, J &J, no one else has this instrument. AbbVie has this unique capability.

Hemdeep (18:03)
So let's go back to the instrument. Now you've printed out that block. It sounds like as if it requires either additional parts that you're going to fuse onto it to complete it. What other machining have you needed to do on the part in order to now become a fully functional device for your application.

Drew (18:25)
OK, I really want Anne to talk about all the print settings that she had to fight with. But I'll talk a little bit about the machining post, the post-processing that has to happen. OK. So the first thing that has to happen is if you print vertically, so if your print bed is like this and you're printing it in this orientation, the layers will diffract light. Yeah. And that's bad for optical sensing purposes. So we actually print it tilted. So. Once you surpass the angle of total refraction, then you get better optical quality in your prints. That's the first thing that we had to do. The surface roughness of the print layers is insufficient for our needs. So what we had to do is develop a method to coat the microchannels with epoxy. So if you fill the microchannels, with epoxy and then you blow them out, the films of the liquid epoxy will collapse and occlude the channel. And so then you've ruined your part. So then you have to have constant airflow. If you have constant airflow, then you get rippling. We had to come up with a way to apply a body force to the liquid film so that it cures, the epoxy cures smoothly. And we are able to do that by putting the entire thing in a centrifuge, a heated centrifuge, and then we can spin it at some ridiculous speed, 200 RPM or something, and then get the epoxy to cure smoothly on the channel. So now we have smooth internal geometry. We have good optical quality. Then we take that and we send that to a machine shop. They square it up because nothing comes out of the printer square. and they square it up so that it can be mounted and oriented in the instrument correctly. So I think just that part goes through all of those things. But Anne can talk about ⁓ how do you print a microchannel but also not have it peel off the bed.

Hemdeep (20:28)
Yeah, sure. for sure. Can you tell me how tall that piece is? That looks to be about a hundred, probably 120 mils. ⁓ being about 100 % max.

Drew (20:42)
So if you take this block and you orient it in the print orientation, the maximum height from the lower raft that's been removed to the top of the block itself is the maximum height the CAD works, ProFluidics will allow, which is 120 millimeters. And we've maximized the width as well.

Hemdeep (21:06)
Yeah, it is. OK. Wow, that's incredible. Hearing how you had to rethink everything from print orientation to epoxy coating and even using a sensor for you to achieve optical quality really shows the level of creativity and precision that goes into making these devices work. And with that, that's a wrap for today's episode of Big Ideas at Microscale. A huge thank you to Drew Wolman Anne Tong and John Shanley. for walking us through Spark's journey with 3D printing and how it's reshaping the way they develop custom scientific tools. We explored how their adoption of additive manufacturing transformed iteration speeds, how they balanced traditional microfabrication with modern 3D printing, and how all of this cumulated in the iBeacon, a one-of-a-kind device that gives AbbVie the capability no other commercial vendor can match. It's a powerful reminder that big breakthroughs often come from blending disciplines and testing bold ideas, even when the path forward isn't obvious at first. Be sure to tune in next week where the Sparks team will take us even deeper into the technical challenges of 3D printing, microfluidics, everything from maintaining microchannel integrity to aligning thousands of layers with precision. It's an inside look on how iteration and teamwork turn cutting edge ideas into reality. can also follow us for more updates and behind the scenes content on LinkedIn, Instagram, Blue Sky and X. We're Cadworks3D across the board. That's spelled C-A-D-W-O-R-K-S. For show notes, paper references and bonus resources on today's topic, visit our website, cadworx3d.com. That's spelled C-A-D-W-O-R-K-S.com. and we will see you on the other side. Thanks for tuning in and as always stay curious, keep exploring and never stop asking the big questions that are shaping our world. Whether you're in lab or on the go or simply curious about the future of science and technology, join us next time on Big Ideas at Microscale.