Welcome to “necroprinting”—3D printer nozzle made from mosquito’s proboscis

Necrobotics is a field of engineering that builds robots out of a mix of synthetic materials and animal body parts. It has produced micro-grippers with pneumatically operated legs taken from dead spiders and walking robots based on deceased cockroaches. “These necrobotics papers inspired us to build something different,” said Changhong Cao, a mechanical engineering professor at the McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

Cao’s team didn’t go for a robot—instead, it adapted a female mosquito proboscis to work as a nozzle in a super-precise 3D printer. And it worked surprisingly well.

Fangs and stings

To find the right nozzle for their 3D necroprinting system, Cao’s team began with a broad survey of natural micro-dispensing tips. The researchers examined stingers of bees, wasps, and scorpions; the fangs of venomous snakes; and the claws of centipedes. All of those evolved to deliver a fluid to the target, which is ...