TY - JOUR
TI - Is the spider a weaving master or a printing expert?
AU - Zuo Yuting
AU - Liu Hongjun
JN - Thermal Science
PY - 2022
VL - 26
IS - 3
SP - 2471
EP - 2475
PT - Article
AB - This paper shows that a spider is a spinning master and a printing expert as  well. Firstly, a spider can produce different types of silks by controlling  the spinning process, which is correlated with silk properties.  Understanding the natural spinning process can greatly help for the  improvement of artificial spinning processes to control the products'  quality. Here we show the periodic motion of muscles connected to the  spinnerets plays an important role in controlling the spinning process and  the silk properties, which leads to a zero resistance of the viscous flow in  the gland duct and ordered macromolecules in the silk. We anticipate this  finding can promote a sophisticated study of other animals' spinning  properties and bio-inspired design of artificial spinning processes.  Secondly, the spider web is not weaved, but it is printed, the process is  similar to the modern 3-D printing technology. Finally, a spider-inspired  4-D printing technology is suggested.