Article
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Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed
Open Source Completely 3-D Printable Centrifuge
Version 1
: Received: 16 April 2019 / Approved: 18 April 2019 / Online: 18 April 2019 (08:03:58 CEST)
A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.
Sule, S.S.; Petsiuk, A.L.; Pearce, J.M. Open Source Completely 3-D Printable Centrifuge. Instruments 2019, 3, 30. Sule, S.S.; Petsiuk, A.L.; Pearce, J.M. Open Source Completely 3-D Printable Centrifuge. Instruments 2019, 3, 30.
Abstract
Centrifuges are commonly required devices in medical diagnostics facilities as well as scientific laboratories. Although there are commercial and open source centrifuges, costs of the former and required electricity to operate the latter, limit accessibility in resource-constrained settings. There is a need for low-cost, human-powered, verified and reliable lab-scale centrifuge. This study provides the designs for a low-cost 100% 3-D printed centrifuge, which can be fabricated on any low-cost RepRap-class fused filament fabrication (FFF) or fused particle fabrication (FPF)-based 3-D printer. In addition, validation procedures are provided using a web camera and free and open source software. This paper provides the complete open source plans including instructions for fabrication and operation for a hand-powered centrifuge. This study successfully tested and validated the instrument, which can be operated anywhere in the world with no electricity inputs obtaining a radial velocity of over 1750rpm and over 50N of relative centrifugal force. Using commercial filament the instrument costs about US$25, which is less than half of all commercially available systems; however, the costs can be dropped further using recycled plastics on open source systems for over 99% savings. The results are discussed in the contexts of resource-constrained medical and scientific facilities.
Keywords
3-D printing; additive manufacturing; biomedical equipment; biomedical engineering; centrifuge; design; distributed manufacturing; laboratory equipment; open hardware; open source; open source hardware; medical equipment; medical instrumentation; scientific instrumentation
Subject
Medicine and Pharmacology, Other
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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