It's not.

My mind tends at the end of an experiment to immediately jump to 'Okay, that worked. Now where is THAT leading me next?' Sometimes it gets ahead of itself, but so far I think it's right on track on this thing.

There are some drawbacks to this, and a few things I'm seeing that need changed.

I'll start with the changes: The way it's designed you're pulling the plate out and putting it back in all the time. What I've learned already is the way I'm supporting it needs some work. It's getting bumped out of level all the time. So I need to redo it.

Also, the slide on the syringe is not up to snuff. The more I run it the more slop it has in it. It's not a problem when extruding because it doesn't change direction for the duration of the run. But it's getting ugly when you're moving it back and forth.

So that needs more work.

Now, for the drawbacks:

The main one is there is a lot more work to get ready for a run than, say, 3D printing. You need to weigh the material you are going to run, and the solvent you're going to use, and do it accurately. Then there's the mixing and loading the syringe. Setting up for the run isn't too bad, just load the syringe and run it until you're getting drops coming out, then flip the high voltage on and adjust until you see the taylor cone forming. (I DID see the taylor cone today, so that's good) Then pick up a book, mow the lawn, whatever, until the run is complete. That's were the fun starts again, in the clean up. Take the table out, collect your fibers, clean the table, then start the machine's clean up. I load up a syringe a couple of times with water, put a small container under the nozzle, and flush everything out, from the syringe tip all the way to the nozzle. Trust me, you don't want to put that part off. It doesn't end well.

It's not bad, and I'm getting used to it. But it takes a bit more effort than 3D printing.

I couldn't end the drawback part of this without mentioning time. This is NOT a fast technique. But it will do things you can't do otherwise. So there it is.

I'm more excited about this than when I started. My job this summer is to show you WHY I feel that way, and then let you decide if you want to try this. I hope you do.

Oh, as an afterthought: the stuff I ran today stiffened up and ended it's tendency to crumble the longer it dried. It holds together well enough now I could write on it it I wanted to. So lets add some drying time to the list of 'things to do after a run'.