Getting chemical with a 3D printer

When your 96 well plate isnt the depth or the colour you want for an assay, print your own design. #3Dprinting

Spooled filament with interesting compositions for the Immortal Manufacturing project. #3Dprinting

Making custom filament with a Filabot.

Cheaper than plastic, board laser-cuts well, even when you want to create something intricate in the shape of a 96 well plate.

With a laser cutter, you can make a rack for your tubes no matter how unique their dimensions...

We are trying out printing with the new sustainable plastic filament called Biome3D from Biome Bioplastics. It's the stuff in black (white is standard ABS). First thoughts- it prints at 180 degrees rather the 220 degrees we use for ABS and superficially you get the same quality.

Laser cut baffles in a stirred reactor vessel.

We wanted baffles inside a reaction vessel so that when the overhead stirrer (in white) spins, the stationary baffles (in blue) give enhanced mixing for a polymerization. The baffles have been laser cut (not printed for once) and we have some with holes in too to see if that is better. It was modelled in cardboard before the laser cutter was fired up!

Second iteration of our multiple element for a flow chemistry array. It looks very similar to the last one except down the side are vertical plastic columns which need to be cut out to give a channel to house the tubing for the flow to be circulated back to the top by the pump.

You can print a grid with 150 micron holes using a Solidoodle. Is that a good filter for anyone?

So we've got the track working to look at a single immobilized enzyme in a flow chemistry mode. Now we want to have a repeating unit you can connecting together to do many biocatalysis reactions in parallel, and then output into a well plate. Here's the first iteration. We'll drill out the ends to give a good joint and nozzle.

I was asked at the Industrial Biotechnology Showcase in London whether you could print a filter. Indeed you can produce something with a regular grid of holes...

3D printed peristaltic pump, controlled by an Arduino board which can run 5 such pumps independently.

We are adapting a design from the NIH 3D print exchange for a tank which you can use to flow water over the top of a glass slide with a constant head of water. As ever, we've printed a mould, cast a silicone and now we can make as many epoxy casts of it as we like.

We've been making our version of the peristaltic pump from here ( http://tim.cexx.org/?p=1282). We've printed the housing, and are using an Arduino controlled servo for controllability.

A great resource with some neat tools