Openpump – An Open Source Syringe Pump With 3D Printing & Bioprinting Potential

Openpump, an open-source syringe pump made to dispense fluids over a set period of time, is just like the syringe pumps used to administer medication in hospitals and laboratory environments.  Most often used to perform chemical or biomedical research, pumps like this open-source version could easily be used for 3D printing extrusion of paste or as part of a 3D bioprinter for outputting biological materials.  It’s a collaboratively-designed, general-purpose syringe pump platform which can be customized for a variety of uses, and the hardware design is available under an open source license which enables the design to be modified as needed.

Openpump was initiated by Gerrit Niezen for his work as a member of the Techealth initiative at Swansea University in Wales. That group has been researching the usability, interface, and interaction design of infusion pumps as part of the CHI+MED project, and it dawned on them that no such complete, open-source infusion pump could be found.

Niezen was once a PhD candidate in the Department of Industrial Design at TU Eindhoven, where he earned his BEng Computer Engineering, and he received his MEng Computer Engineering from the University of Pretoria in South Africa. Following a brief stint in the private sector, Niezen returned to the University of Pretoria as a lecturer in software engineering and network security. He also taught a postgraduate class in wireless sensor networks, and after completing his PhD work in the Netherlands, he signed on at the Computer Science Department at Swansea University in 2012...