This is a list of potentially interesting, but not necessarily directly related publications. Get in contact if you think something is missing.
Projects and initiatives
Journals
The development of open hardware for scientific purposes is the subject of several journals. In the list below, the names of the publishers are linked to the relevant wikipedia article to allow for critical reflection on their publishing procedures.
- Journal of Open Hardware by Ubiquity Press
- HardwareX by Elsevier
- Instruments by MDPI
- Inventions by MDPI
- Designs by MDPI
- Review of Scientific Instruments by AIP Publishing
- PLOS Open Source Toolkit channel by PLOS
Open-Labware
by Tom Baden
A collaboration between the Baden Lab, TReND in Africa, and OpenNeuroscience share a collection of designs and modifications of Open-Source Hardware designs for research labs. Additional documentation is provided in the review “Open Labware: 3-D Printing Your Own Lab Equipment”.
Appropedia: Open-source Lab
by Joshua Pearce
The Open-Source Lab is an initiative by Michigan Tech’s Open Sustainability Technology (MOST) Lab, accompanied by the book “Open-Source Lab: How to Build Your Own Hardware and Reduce Research Costs” (2013). The MOST Lab maintains several pages on the Appropedia, containing a vast amount of useful information for open-source hardware, developing scientific instruments, and 3D-printing in general. Their page on 3D-printable science equipment (including sequels 2 and 3) alone is a useful collection of components for labs. Joshua Pearce also curates a list of scientific tools on Thingiverse.
DocuBricks
by Tobias Wenzel and Johan Henriksson
DocuBricks is a site for sharing Open Science Hardware that focuses on detailed and high-quality descriptions of complex setups. The website was created and is maintained by a group of academics at the University of Cambridge. The repository contains few, but useful and thoroughly documented items. In addition, they provide guidelines on how to write a good documentation.
NIH 3D Print Exchange
by the US-American National Insitutes of Health (NIH)
This repository focuses on “scientifically accurate or medically applicable” 3D-printable models. This includes a significant amount of molecular models for pedagogy and research, but there is also a section of “Labware & Devices”.
Specific publications and tools
The following list of papers and online resources is more or less a random sample of what seemed interesting or was sent to us by colleagues. Please keep sending us your interesting publications.
A new type of spherical flexure joint based on tetrahedron elements
by Jelle Rommers and Volkert van der Wijk and Just L. Herder
Abstract: In this paper we present two new designs of spherical flexure joints, which are the compliant equivalent of a traditional ball-and-socket joint. The designs are formed by tetrahedron-shaped elements, each composed of three blade flexures with a trapezoidal shape, that are connected in series without intermediate bodies. This is new with respect to the designs currently found in literature and helps to increase the range of motion. We also present two planar (x-y-θz ) flexure joint designs which were derived as special versions of the spherical designs. In these designs the tetrahedron elements have degenerated to a triangular prisms. For detailed investigation we developed equivalent representations of the tetrahedron and triangular prism elements and proved that three of the four constraint stiffness terms depend solely on the properties of the main blade flexure. Furthermore, we derived equations for these stiffness terms which are compared to finite-element simulations, showing a good correspondence for the prism element with a Normalized Mean Absolute Error (NMAE) of 1.9%. For the tetra hedron element, the equations showed to only capture the qualitative behaviour with a NMAE of 34.9%. Also, we derived an equation for the optimal width of the prism element regarding rotational stiffness.
DOI: 10.1016/j.precisioneng.2021.03.002
Spherical treadmill for mouse VR
preprint by Tim Schroeder, Jan Klee, Abdellatif Nemri, Martha Havenith, and Francesco Battaglia
Abstract: In this design, a 3D-printed base distributes compressed air evenly to support a floating styrofoam ball, while two sensors measure the ball’s rotation speed on 2 axes. It is typically used with virtual reality setups for mouse behavior (Harvey et al. 2009). This open-source project is modified from a design by the Technocenter, Radboud University in collaboration with the Battaglia lab. The original design was adapted to 1) Accommodate the Logitech G502 mouse model (earlier model was discontinued), 2) Distance control – the sensor can be moved closer or away from the styrofoam ball, simply by adding washers between sensor box wall and base. 3) Easy access – The sensor box can be easily open/closed (it attaches with magnets), facilitating cleaning. All sensor components can be removed in that way, giving access to the screws that enable distance control. 4) Easy anchoring on optic tables with 4 feet compatible with M6 screws. This project requires 3D-printed parts (FDM), 2 Logitech G502 mice, a valve and a few screws. See the Assembly Instructions document for a detailed bill of materials and step-by-step instructions.
Openstage: A Low-Cost Motorized Microscope Stage with Sub-Micron Positioning Accuracy
by A. A. Campbell, Robert W. Eifert, and Glenn C. Turner
Recent progress in intracellular calcium sensors and other fluorophores has promoted the widespread adoption of functional optical imaging in the life sciences. Home-built multiphoton microscopes are easy to build, highly customizable, and cost effective. For many imaging applications a 3-axis motorized stage is critical, but commercially available motorization hardware (motorized translators, controller boxes, etc) are often very expensive. Furthermore, the firmware on commercial motor controllers cannot easily be altered and is not usually designed with a microscope stage in mind. Here we describe an open-source motorization solution that is simple to construct, yet far cheaper and more customizable than commercial offerings. The cost of the controller and motorization hardware are under $1000. Hardware costs are kept low by replacing linear actuators with high quality stepper motors. Electronics are assembled from commonly available hobby components, which are easy to work with. Here we describe assembly of the system and quantify the positioning accuracy of all three axes. We obtain positioning repeatability of the order of 1µm in X/Y and 0.1µm in Z. A hand-held control-pad allows the user to direct stage motion precisely over a wide range of speeds (10-1 to 102µm s-1), rapidly store and return to different locations, and execute “jumps” of a fixed size. In addition, the system can be controlled from a PC serial port. Our “OpenStage” controller is sufficiently flexible that it could be used to drive other devices, such as micro-manipulators, with minimal modifications.
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0088977
Treadmill Ball Grinders
Stephen L Holtz from the Wilson Lab shared his method to produce the walking spheres for Drosophila treadmills in a GitHub repository.