Digital Designs and Scientific Hardware - Open-Source Lab: How to Build Your Own Hardware and Reduce Research Costs - page 246

FIGURE 6.90 A pipette stand made from printed parts and nonrefillable HPLC columns.
The ability to fabricate custom connectors makes it possible to use nonrefillable high-per-
formance liquid chromatography (HPLC) columns as a constructor set to make the pipete
rack. Pipete racks are probably not a major expense in your lab and usually cost $85-140, but
again this is money perhaps beter spent elsewhere. You do not need to stop there. You can
make your own adjustable volume pipet e 107 as shown in Figure 6.91 , which was developed by
Dr Konrad Walus of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University
of British Columbia. He is well known in the maker community for his clever low-cost 3-D
printable scientific designs for hobbyists (e.g. 3-D printable microscopes), but the broader aim
of his research group is to develop printing technology that is capable of producing active
electronic, mechanical, and chemically sensitive devices. This is the next stage in open-source
3-D printing as more complex, active, smart and functional materials are printed into objects
turning them into sophisticated devices. In addition, his lab has already begun to look at bio-
logically useful structures (e.g. programmatically defined tissues by 3-D printing multicellular
assemblies) in new variations of the basic printing technology. His group is specifically target-
ing the fabrication of 3-D tissue constructs for use in drug screening and testing. The potential
for enormous impact and radical improving while reducing the costs of modern medicine are
staggering. Perhaps a final example shows how the Walus group is repaid for sharing. Fol-
lowing the open-source model, Walus's adjustable volume pipete has already been simpliied
and improved and reshared 108 as seen in the new design show in Figure 6.92 developed by
Thingiverse user: aliekens.