Hemdeep (00:10)
Welcome to Big Ideas in Microscale, the podcast where we explore groundbreaking research happening at the microscale where micro innovations makes a big impact. We're excited to showcase the incredible work being done by our users from 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 experiences, uncover their insight, and bring their big ideas to a audience. So whether your 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 at Microscale. I'm Hemdeep, your host and co-founder of Creative CADworks, CADworks 3D, and Resinworks 3D. Sadly, today I will not be joined by my co-host Robin. She is currently setting up in her new life in Alberta, but she will be back to join us in our future episodes. Over the last two episodes, we've been chatting with members of the Sparks Group. at AbbVie, a curiosity-driven skunkworks-style team reshaping how science gets done inside a pharmaceutical company. First, we explored how Sparks embraced organized chaos, bringing together diverse expertise in engineering and science to create custom tools and prototypes that accelerate research. Then we dove into their journey with 3D printing. from hesitant beginnings to building complex one-of-a-kind instruments like the Ibeacon for protein analysis. If you missed those episodes, definitely go back and check them out. They'll give you the full picture on how this team has turned unconventional approaches into powerful innovations. We'll be right here when you are ready to jump back in. This week, we're entering the next phase of the story. Anne and Andrew share the technical challenges and breakthroughs behind printing microfluidic devices at scale, tackling everything from delamination and resin handling to cleaning channels as small as 300 microns. We'll also hear how they pushed the limits of resolution and alignment, redesigned hardware to stabilize prints, and even began printing threads directly onto parts that saved them time and expanded their capability. More than just problem solving, this episode reveals the mindset that makes Sparks successful, humility, collaboration, and the courage to learn through iteration. So let's jump right back into Big Ideas at Microscale. So, Anne, the one thing that I've learned over the last ⁓ six or seven years since we've been developing platforms and especially also materials, profile, and that is actually key to everything. And the fact that you've managed to be able to create a profile for a large device of that scale is very impressive. was the struggles that you had? I've heard of horror stories. I want to hear yours as well.

Anne (03:34)
I think most of the time, Drew had to deal with the problem before I joined to work with him. So he spent almost a year fighting with the problem, trying to bring the big part. Because before, if it's too heavy, while doing the printing, it just fell off the print bed. For example, delamination is a big issue. I really like the technology in the printer that ⁓ you can peel the print. the vat with the print bed in an angle. So the vat tilting at an angle peeling off from one side instead of pulling on the print bed straight vertically from the vat. And that is what I really like about this printer. And then I finally slowly tune in for large surface coverage of the print bed. We need to peel it slowly, like slowly changing the speed. and peeling it slowly, but for the big part, if you peel, you slow down all the steps, it's gonna take forever. And time is important value to us. So we figure out, when we tilt the part at 30 degrees, the part that come with the print bed first, the printing part first, from the top to bottom, the upper part. has higher, bigger surface because all the support you need to add on the side so that it can hold the weight of the part that we want to print. So those steps we can slowly fine-tuning the time, like slower at the top, peeling off the speed, and then we can gradually increase the speed. So when it come to the top, the final sum, like around 30 % final layers, you can speed it up. And then, like fine tuning those steps to figure out how fast you can peel off the cross-linked material from the bed is a key. Because delamination, sometimes it happens you spend a day printing the part and it's good so far until it reaches to 30 % last of the piece you fell and then you have to redo it again. So the way that Drew and I was figuring out is sectioning out the part before we print the whole block. So we test out with this feature, we print it and then changing the parameter. And then we section out, we take another part of the block, we print it. And with that, so covering surface area and then with the sweep that we're printing and the curing time, we can investigate, ⁓ this part need this much of curing time. and it has to wait for about one second or two second or three seconds before we even start to peel off the cross-linkage material from the back. And then later when you have all the parameter, we combine them. And then with this section, we need this setting with the other section, we need the other setting.

Hemdeep (06:45)
So ⁓ what was your print time roughly? ⁓

Anne (06:48)
For that block, it takes around 28 hours. For optimization, can take around 50 or 70 hours.

Hemdeep (06:52)
on it. You have someone there pouring new material into the vat? Because I think you would have depleted the vat very quickly. Yes.

Anne (07:06)
I usually set it up before I leave for the day. And the next day when I come in, I just pause the print and the printer is smart enough to pause it to report that the next layer is about to cross link on top of the part. And then I just top it up. But in the future, for example, for another printer that John set up, they have the big resin reservoir and then it can pump in automatically sensing the level and pump in the new resin. But that is not really the pain in the ass for me. Topping up, it takes me 5 minutes, 10 minutes, so it's not really a problem.

Hemdeep (07:45)
Okay, so if you had 300 micron channels in the z direction and you had it angled, did you find that you had any deviation on the channels? Because UV light is going to penetrate right through on subsequent layers. So you print a channel and then even though it is now farther away from the vat, there is UV light being exposed to it. Did you just modify the profile to address that? How do you guys do that?

Anne (08:11)
We modify the layer thickness, curing layer thickness. And also we fine-tuning the curing time. Sometimes for the smaller channel and deeper embedded channel inside the 3D printed blocks, we do a little bit under curing. So it's enough to cure the layer, it's enough to get that layer pure from the bed, but accommodate the over curing issue from the light penetrating through the block.

Drew (08:38)
Anne also is being too modest. So she's working on all of these settings and that impacts the cure, which impacts the cleaning of the block after it comes out of the printer. And Anne also did a lot of work on developing the cleaning procedure. So how do we get 300 micron micro channels cleared that have been overexposed or underexposed? So there's work there. I don't know if she wants to talk about that.

Hemdeep (09:13)
That'd be great to hear. All of these are issues that 3D printing will have, especially on the small scale. Micro scale is very difficult to print. I'm amazed that you tackled so many of these all on one device. Usually, most people will address only one issue per device. You've tackled pretty much every issue on one device.

Anne (09:33)
Yes, for the cleaning. So through experience before when we have a third party that doing the printing for us, they soak the treated printed block in the solvent for so long and then it creates the breakage, delamination and then deforming of the channel. So we learned that we have to reduce the washing time. It's not like we can soak the part inside IPA for one day or two days. We need to do it quick so that the printed channel is not affected or washing away or eating out by the solvent. And then we also set up the station that I can use the high air pressure to flow out the uncured resin. But sometimes for a very small channel, the resistance inside the channel is too high. If you don't have a very tight fit, on the inlet, you cannot blow air through. It's just going to find a way to leak out back to the inlet. And then we figure out, we can try to flow the solvent through it using high pressure. And then when it doesn't work, we apply mechanical wrapping. So we have unlimited supplies from the needles and small wires. We run through the channels. try to push out a little bit amount of un-cured resin inside the channel. And then we can use the high air pressure or high pressure solvent fluid to flow through the channel and try to clean it slowly. So it's a multiple step process. And then just try to clean it. And then curing is also a problem because for a thick block, Yeah. Curing is also critical because you don't want any uncuring resin or leakage throughout the time of using. So we just use a commercialized oven from another provider. And then we first do the like bulk curing of the part. And then we use your oven chamber to cure the like concentrate in because it's directional so we can concentrate which side of the block that we want to kill more.

Hemdeep (11:53)
That is an amazing ⁓ piece of device that you guys have created. Any other features in regards to that device in terms of the applications or anything of that sort?

Drew (12:06)
Yeah, so another thing that we had to combat is when you're dealing with a microchannel that's vertical, that's 300 microns in diameter, if your print bed moves 300 microns during a peel-off event, that means your next layer is misaligned with the previous layer. Yes. And so the printer has this clamp that you clamp down on, and that works reasonably well for micro channels that are in small blocks where there is a small amount of surface area. But for our component, there's a large volume, large surface area. So that peel off force is very high and can misalign and overcome the power of that clamp. We first tried to shim it. And so we just put in some shims and clamped it down and went to town. That was insufficient. So what we ended up needing to do is we take the print bed and we modified it and we put in some set screws. So after we mount the print bed, we clamp it down and then we can tighten some set screws in the print bed. Yeah, on the build platform are the set screws. And it's more challenging to like take in and out of the printer. But the benefits of a far superior, every layer is aligned.

Hemdeep (13:31)
In this device you probably have how many layers did you have your files? ⁓

Anne (13:35)
around 2500 layers.

Hemdeep (13:39)
Yeah, you could not afford any sort of sideways shifts because that's 27 hours down the drain at that point, right?

Drew (13:48)
Right. We've sent this out to multiple third party manufacturers, 3D systems, Stratasys, also foreign companies. No one can do this, only Anne can do this.

Hemdeep (14:02)
There you go, see? There's something to be said to, you can give someone a hammer and they can just go around willy-nilly just hammering everything. It just takes a skilled crafts person to really do the right thing with it. That is amazing. ⁓ When I saw that block that Drew just showed that I know what the challenges are inherently, but to be patient and overcome those, that's where the recognition right there. So now you take this block of yours. Obviously this is not going to be one off every time that you require a new ⁓ protein to be tested, it requires a brand new block to be printed, or is it now something that will go get machined and then it will be something that will be part of your tool set as you develop other drugs.

Drew (14:52)
The instrument is designed to be cleaned. ⁓ So cleaning the block is important. It's not like there's one block per team, but we want there to be multiple instruments. We have instruments deployed around the globe. So we have customers in Germany and Austin and California who have different or subtly different needs. So their blocks might differ a little bit. And so the main thrust of this was to make the blocks as easily replaceable as possible, as easily manufacturable as possible, while still maintaining the high quality. Fantastic. One thing that changed in my thought process of 3D printing during the development of this block was printing threads. I have always been a skeptic of thread printing. I would always prefer to cut the threads into a part. So I'll print the hole or I'd print a pilot hole and then drill and then thread. And I believed with all my heart that that was the best way to do it. And then one of our group members was like, you know, I'm just going to try it. He tried it and it worked out great. And then I tried it and I will never go back. So if the printer has the resolution to print threads, it saves so much time. and you can do so much more. So I think there's over 10 threaded features on just this one block, and there are different types of threads. There's pipe threads, there's straight threads, there's Heli coil threads. If your software allows you to make that thread, your printer can print that thread, and it's never let us down.

Hemdeep (16:41)
That block is now forever etched. That itself is a very, it's such a strong statement of the type of work that your team does at AAPRI for sure. Any ⁓ last and final statements or words you'd like to share with

Drew (16:56)
And I didn't talk to you. I talked to Maryfrances about this, but I just wanted to tell you where I thought all of us together, the story that I wanted to tell. We're in this group. We don't know what we're doing. We're all trying to come up with these cool ideas and realize these complicated machines. And John says, there's a better way. Let's cut down time. Let's make... things faster, let's iterate faster, let's learn quicker. And he brings in 3D printing. He's so humble, but he's stuffing it down our throats. And it's not just us, right? There's other group members that are like, no, this will never work. This is, you can't depend on a 3D printer. You can't do this. can't, those 3D printers that that John talked about, all six of them, all eight of them, whatever, they're always running.

Hemdeep (17:48)
No, for sure. The funny thing is, is that the way your team is made up is very similar to ours. None of our team are engineers. I graduated with a degree in physics and astronomy. My brother's a musician and a sociology major. So he, if you try to call him up during the summer, he's doing street festivals throughout the city of Toronto. Like it's just insane. We're very curious, like hyper curious to a fault sometimes where we get lost and we're down rabbit holes. And Robin was one of the first hires that we had that actually build a schedule. We did not understand schedules. We didn't understand timeframes. There was no such thing as a deadline in our life. And then she came along and said, well, you know, we should be doing deadlines and schedules. So I completely appreciate where you came from. And the fact that John is an advocate of this, I really commend you because there are people that we talk to often and that really sort of look at 3D printing as a either gimmicky or they always see it as it will never apply to me. And they don't realize that, you you're either one material away or a specific machine away from it to actually apply to your application. Like it just fits. And the minute that you find that marriage between the correct material application methodology and purpose, you're off to the races. There's nothing that can stop you at that point. And so ⁓ I do commend you for ⁓ pushing them along. That definitely is important.

John (19:24)
I think the secret hiding in plain sight here is that we're all experts, right? Everybody's an expert in everything all the time. And till you step back and say, Hey, wait, I don't really know about this. If you can admit that then it's easy. can, you can learn a lot. yeah. That's the secret sauce of this group. So to speak is that the whole reason that we succeed, like a micro fabricator, ⁓ a fluid astronomer, extraordinaire bicyclist, whatever, and a mechanical engineer masquerading as a software guy. The reason that we can succeed in a pharmaceutical company is because we're all comfortable admitting that we don't know what we're doing, talking about, or looking at any given time. And we're all comfortable walking into labs full of experts who do know the chemistry, do know the biology, and just saying, hey, what if, what if you tried this? What if you did that? How does it work when you, and just kind of. take off the blinders. And in a lot of ways, that's kind of what we had to do to get 3D printing up and running here. And yeah, I started that, but Anne and Drew, they saw it through. I think that's probably a good way to sum up how we got ourselves into this.

Hemdeep (20:38)
Amazing. So I would like to thank the three of you for taking time out today and sharing the amazing work that you and your team at AbbVie Sparks are doing. I am impressed with the type of things that people do, but this one really was very, very impressive in terms of being able to bring together a ton of skill and ⁓ know how to put that block together. And I know because we do blocks like that at the office and we know that the amount of work that's required to fine tune a profile to get it done. is amazing work. Thank you very much. Okay. Awesome.

John (21:20)
Thanks.

Anne (21:21)
Thank you so much for having us today. We enjoyed the conversation.

Hemdeep (21:26)
Thank you very much. Have a great day, guys. And with that, we've reached the end of our series with the Sparks team here at Big Ideas at Microscale. Over the past three episodes, we've explored how this unique group at AbbVie is reimagining what research can look like working in an environment that values curiosity, creativity, and collaboration. We learned how diverse expertise in engineering and science come together to solve problems. how 3D printing evolved into the cornerstone of their workflow, and how breakthroughs in microfluidic microfabrication are enabling tools that no one else in the industry has. Spark's work is a powerful reminder that innovation doesn't just happen at the product level. It begins with curiosity, iteration, and the courage to tackle hard problems from new angles. A huge thank you to Drew Wollman, Anne Tong, John Shanley and the entire Sparks Group for sharing their journey with us. With that, the Big Ideas and Microscale podcast will be taking a little break for the rest of 2025, but join us next year in 2026 to see what else is in store. You can also follow us for more updates and behind the scenes content on LinkedIn, Instagram, Blue Sky and X. We are 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, cadworks3d.com. That's spelled C-A-D-W-O-R-K-S.C-O-M. 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 the lab or on the go or simply curious about the future of science and technology, join us next time on Big Ideas at Microscale.