A one-piece 3D printed flexure translation stage for open-source microscopy

Abstract

Open source hardware has the potential to revolutionise the way we build scientific instruments; with the advent of readily-available 3D printers, mechanical designs can now be shared, improved and replicated faster and more easily than ever before. However, printed parts are typically plastic and often perform poorly compared to traditionally machined mechanisms. We have overcome many of the limitations of 3D printed mechanisms by exploiting the compliance of the plastic to produce a monolithic 3D printed flexure translation stage, capable of sub-micron-scale motion over a range of 8×8×4 mm. This requires minimal post-print cleanup, and can be automated with readily-available stepper motors. The resulting plastic composite structure is very stiff and exhibits remarkably low drift, moving less than 20 µm over the course of a week, without temperature stabilisation. This enables us to construct a miniature microscope with excellent mechanical stability, perfect for timelapse measurements in situ in an incubator or fume hood. The ease of manufacture lends itself to use in containment facilities where disposability is advantageous, and to experiments requiring many microscopes in parallel. High performance mechanisms based on printed flexures need not be limited to microscopy, and we anticipate their use in other devices both within the laboratory and beyond.

An Assemblable, Multi-Angle Fluorescence and Ellipsometric Microscope

“…The SwingScope project also fits within and benefits from the the open source do-it-yourself (DIY) approaches in terms of functionality and assemblability. For example, many publications listed in the PLOS collection on Open Source Toolkit:Hardware [48] can be incorporated into this microscope design to enable functionality and cost savings [2, 41, 49–51]. …”

Low-cost, open-access refractive index mapping of algal cells using the transport of intensity equation

“…In order to show how the components used in the lab-prototype could be used in a device more suitable for field deployment and that has even lower infrastructure requirements, we also performed a subset of the measurements using an open source 3D printable microscope designed by Water Scope [22]. This microscope uses a Raspberry Pi camera V2 with the camera's lens removed, reversed and mounted at a greater distance from the sensor than in conventional use.…”

The Flexiscope: a Low Cost, Flexible, Convertible, and Modular Microscope with Automated Scanning and Micromanipulation

“…The cost of the Flexiscope without any motion control elements is ~€11,000. Depending on your requirements other excellent motion control systems have been devised by Campbell et al (2014) and Sharkey et al (2016). It should also be noted that while Matlab was available to all staff and students in our institution this may not be the case in other institutions and this cost should be taken into consideration.…”

“…With flexibility and funding limitations in mind, many researchers have devised excellent cost-saving strategies which include 3D printed microscopes and XYZ translators (Sharkey et al, 2016), (Baden et al, 2015) (Maia Chagas et al, 2017), (Stewart and Giannini, 2016), a $0.58 origami microscope (Cybulski et al, 2014), and modifications to old microscopes (Peidle et al, 2009), (Hernández Vera et al, 2016), (Stewart and Giannini, 2016). These types of systems are advantageous in the field or within incubators but their low cost often equates to a compromise in image quality and a lack of long term stability.…”