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Save tons of money on your science equipment budget or start DIY science lab. It is easy ...

Open source lab homepage:

http://www.appropedia.org/Open-source_Lab

Here is a link to an open source calorimeter:

http://www.appropedia.org/Open-source_colorimeter

Here is the Thingiverse collection of 3d printable science instruments:

http://www.thingiverse.com/jpearce/collections/open-source-scientific-tools/page:1


You can build the 3d printer yourself as it is also open source, detailed instructions are available, check out the post about it here:

http://diy3dprinting.blogspot.com/2013/12/appropedia-most-delta-3d-printer.html


here is 3d printable open source spectrometer:

http://diy3dprinting.blogspot.com/2013/09/publiclaboratory-mobile-3d-printed.html

3d printable calorimeter

Printing blood vessels out of sugar at Uni Pennsylvania lab.


From video description:

Bioengineers have been steadily advancing toward the goal of building lab-grown organs out of a patient's own cells, but a few major challenges remain. One of them is making vasculature, the blood vessel plumbing system that delivers nutrients and remove waste from the cells on the inside of a mass of tissue. Without these blood vessels, interior cells quickly suffocate and die.
Scientists can already grow thin layers of cells, so one proposed solution to the vasculature problem is to "print" the cells layer by layer, leaving openings for blood vessels as necessary. But this method leaves seams, and when blood is pumped through the vessels, it pushes those seams apart.
Bioengineers from the University of Pennsylvania have turned the problem inside out by using a 3D printer called a RepRap to make templates of blood vessel networks out of sugar. Once the networks are encased in a block of cells, the sugar can be dissolved, leaving a functional vascular network behind.
"I got the first hint of this solution when I visited a Body Worlds exhibit, where you can see plastic casts of free-standing, whole organ vasculature," says Bioengineering postdoc Jordan Miller.
Miller, along with Christopher Chen, the Skirkanich Professor of Innovation in the Department of Bioengineering, other members of Chen's lab, and colleagues from MIT, set out to show that this method of developing sugar vascular networks helps keep interior cells alive and functioning.
After the researchers design the network architecture on a computer, they feed the design to the RepRap. The printer begins building the walls of a stabilizing mold. Then it then draws filaments across the mold, pulling the sugar at different speeds to achieve the desired thickness of what will become the blood vessels.
After the sugar has hardened, the researchers add liver cells suspended in a gel to the mold. The gel surrounds the filaments, encasing the blood vessel template. After the gel sets it can be removed from the mold with the template still inside. The block of gel is then washed in water, dissolving the remaining sugar inside. The liquid sugar flows out of the vessels it has created without harming the growing cells.
"This new technology, from the cell's perspective, makes tissue formation a gentle and quick journey," says Chen.
The researchers have successfully pumped nutrient-rich media, and even blood, through these gels blocks' vascular systems. They also have experimentally shown that more of the liver cells survive and produce more metabolites in gels that have these networks.
The RepRap makes testing new vascular architectures quick and inexpensive, and the sugar is stable enough to ship the finished networks to labs that don't have 3D printers of their own. The researchers hope to eventually use this method to make implantable organs for animal studies.
Text by Evan Lerner
Video by Kurtis Sensenig

via: http://go3dprinting.tumblr.com/

http://www.upenn.edu/spotlights/rep-rap-3d-printing-blood-vessel-networks

I found a video demonstration of small particles levitating in air held and manipulated by ultrasonic field.

My first thought was: this could be used in 3d printing!

Particles could be manipulated and held in shape by this ultrasound technology and then melted together by laser or ultrasound energy itself. I know it is far fetched theory ... but somehow I think it could be done ...

Ultrasonic technology is already used in high-end metal 3d printing by Fabrisonic:

http://diy3dprinting.blogspot.com/2013/07/ultrasonic-metal-3d-printing.html

And similar technology is also used to weld plastic:

http://diy3dprinting.blogspot.com/2012/12/diy-ultrasonic-plastic-welding.html

So, all these technologies could be merged together, why not?

Video of ultrasonic particle levitation:


Video description:

The essence of levitation technology is the countervailing of gravity. It is known that an ultrasound standing wave is capable of suspending small particles at its sound pressure nodes and, so far, this method has been used to levitate lightweight particles, small creatures, and water droplets.
The acoustic axis of the ultrasound beam in these previous studies was parallel to the gravitational force, and the levitated objects were manipulated along the fixed axis (i.e. one-dimensionally) by controlling the phases or frequencies of bolted Langevin-type transducers. In the present study, we considered extended acoustic manipulation whereby millimetre-sized particles were levitated and moved three-dimensionally by localised ultrasonic standing waves, which were generated by ultrasonic phased arrays. Our manipulation system has two original features. One is the direction of the ultrasound beam, which is arbitrary because the force acting toward its centre is also utilised. The other is the manipulation principle by which a localised standing wave is generated at an arbitrary position and moved three-dimensionally by opposed and ultrasonic phased arrays. We experimentally confirmed that various materials could be manipulated by our proposed method.

Source:

http://96ochiai.ws/3DOFacoustic

Experiment was done and domnstrated by Yoichi Ochiai, Takayuki Hoshi and Jun Rekimoto ( University of Tokyo, Nagoya Institute of Technology, University of Tokyo and Sony CSL ).

From the source:

By caging bacteria in microscopic houses, scientists at The University of Texas at Austin are studying how communities of bacteria, such as those found in the human gut and lungs, interact and develop infections.
In a recent experiment they demonstrated that a community of Staphylococcus aureus, which can cause some skin infections, became more resistant to antibiotics when it was contained within a larger community of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a bacteria involved in various diseases, including cystic fibrosis.
The work was published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The researchers use a novel 3-D printing technology to build homes for bacteria at a microscopic level. Their method uses a laser to construct protein "cages" around bacteria in gelatin. The resulting structures can be of almost any shape or size, and can be moved around in relationship to other structures containing bacterial microcommunities.
The method should enable an entirely new class of experiments that better approximate the conditions that bacteria encounter in actual biological environments, such as those in the human body.

Source and detailed info:

http://phys.org/news/2013-10-d-scientists-bacterial.html

Ultra-uber-cool! I hope for more improvements, final success in building it and that they open source it.

From project page:

The Challenge: “In one week, can 32 young scientists and designers from China and the UK develop a new type of low-cost scanning probe microscope, powerful enough to study the nano world? And can this device transform science education in Chinese high schools? Tsinghua University, Peking University and University College London team up with the LEGO Foundation to invent, make and market their ideas”
Experts said they couldn't do it… THEY NEARLY DID!

http://www.instituteofmaking.org.uk/blog/2013/09/lego2nano-the-lego-microscope-challenge

I don't get why are they calling it "printing" since there is no printing involved ... maybe it should be named something like "advanced smart interactive shape changing self assembly materials" ... maybe they will print with it in the future .. ya know ... the 4th dimension - time ... cool anyway ...





http://architecture.mit.edu/faculty/skylar-tibbits


http://selfassemblylab.net/

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Version 4



From thingiverse pages:

This spectrometer is a scientific tool that straps onto an Android or iOS phone, tablet, or any camera capable of focusing very close (macro-mode) and allows you to collect spectra. Why would you want one? You can use it to identify the elemental composition of things (light bulbs, olive oil, beer, etc) based on the colors of light they emit. You can even use it to monitor your home brewing progress (http://bit.ly/Xyor6B).

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:49934 (version 3)

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:125428 (version 4)



Here is video describing their idea and scenarios for using DIY spectrometer:




They had a successful Kickstarter campaign:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jywarren/public-lab-diy-spectrometry-kit


Spectral workbench is a place to archive, share, and interpret spectral data.

http://spectralworkbench.org/





Different model of 3d printed spectrometer:

http://diy3dprinting.blogspot.com/2013/09/tricorder-project-3d-printable.html

From the Tricorder project comes small 3d printable DYI science instrument.


























From project website:

The prototype spectrograph is an experiment in low-cost design, and is almost entirely 3D printed using ABS plastic on an inexpensive desktop 3D printer (such as a Makerbot, though I used an ORD Bot Hadron). I have much more experience designing electronics than I do designing optical systems, and so the spectrograph is designed to be swappable/upgradable as newer designs come to pass (and I expect it to go throught a few iterations). This first spectrograph design has a 3D printed slit, and uses an inexpensive 1000-line/mm diffraction grating of the kind you can find on diffraction grating slides for classroom experiments. I read a paper a while ago on using deconvolution to post-process the data from slit spectrometers and basically sharpen the point-spread function (or PSF) to effectively increase the resolution of the instrument. Inspired by this, I decided to leave out the relay optics between slit-to-grating and from grating-to-detector to see if I could use post-processing to effectively sharpen up the overly broad PSF and have an even simpler and less expensive instrument.
The spectrograph design:

• contains a ~0.2mm printed slit

• 400-700nm (approx) spectral range

• Variable spectral resolution (~3.3nm @400nm, ~1.8nm @ 700nm), not accounting for the PSF

• 1000 line-per-mm diffraction grating (cut into a 4mm wide strip, and inserted into the spectrograph flush with the slit aperture)

• 3D printable on an inexpensive printer

• Very small size — about 1cm wide x 2cm long x 3cm tall.

With a spectrometer you’re often battling for SNR, and have to worry about stray light. Although these pictures don’t show it, the spectrograph has to be spray painted with a flat matte black paint to get any kind of performance.

http://www.tricorderproject.org/blog/?p=206

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:148270


Here is the PublicLab version of 3d printable spectrometer:

http://diy3dprinting.blogspot.com/2013/09/publiclaboratory-mobile-3d-printed.html

Ok, this is just amazing. Water does not run out trough the openings!




From video description:

Scientists have developed a universal approach for printing materials with easy-to-modify surfaces to eliminate the need for multiple 3D printers. The versatile 3D printing technique mixes a 3D printing resin with a bromine-containing acrylate. The acrylate acts as an initiator to allow polymer brushes to grow on the printed surface. Printed 3D structures are then grafted into useful materials by surface-initiated atom transfer radical polymerisation.
To test their integrated initiator approach, the group fabricated lattices containing the polymer brushes and modified them to be either superhydrophobic or superhydrophilic. One superhydrophobic structure was in the form of a 2.5 cm diameter hollow mesh ball with 1 mm pores. When filled with water, the hydrophobic ball effectively held the fluid without leakage, even when shaken.
Taken from the following paper:
X Wang et al, Chem. Commun., 2013, DOI: 10.1039/c3cc45817b (rsc.li/1dYFhpS)

Video by: http://www.youtube.com/user/ChemistryWorldUK?feature=watch
Source:
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2013/09/3d-printing-ink-surface-modification

A friend of mine went to visit the science museum MUSE in Trento, Italy. He was very surprised and excited to see 3d printing as part of FabLab inside the museum where they teach children and visitors about it. He sent me some photos.







http://www.muse.it/Pages/default.aspx

More on FabLab MUSE:

http://blog.maketank.it/2013/08/massimo-menichinelli-fablab-trent-muse/






Youtube MUSE channel (Italian only)

http://www.youtube.com/user/MUSEOdelleSCIENZE

Interesting mathematical / geometry toy ...

Introduction to hexaflexagons from paper:






























http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:141124