Recently, Jim has purchased a Makerbot 2x printer for our group. I’ve spent the last few weeks printing and debugging. It has the capability to print many different types of material, along with 2 separate nozzles. I have been able to get many fine prints done with ABS plastic, and I’ve put together a basic guide that will allow people to run the machine (n = Tejas), printing out previously designed builds. I am currently working on other parts of the guide that will describe how to design and slice up models for printing, how to finish parts, and how to weld printed pieces together.
Our Shiny new machine,…missing its lid. I’m told that it is on the way by Top Men. Top Men.
The neatly trimmed ABS plastic, ready for insertion into the extruder. It’s not transparent, unlike PLA.
Replicator 2x has 2 extruders! We can print in multiple colors/materials. Dissolvable scaffolds, 2 tone prints are both possible!
Nozzle extruding a thin line of plastic.
It’s really important to wipe down the build plate with Acetone (ABS dissolves in acetone) to make sure the prints stick. Otherwise, you may have wasted 3 hours for nothing.
Beginning a print. The nozzle purges it’s initial volume of ABS in a line on the front of the build plate..
And we are printing (in this case a bracelet)
Other larger pieces can be printed simultaneously. Here is a spin cup designed by Meghan.
Joining pieces together can be done using a hot glue gun (akin to resin) or ABS slurry (akin to welding). Each have their pros and cons.
Joined with hot glue. It’s water tight!.
We will be able to print PLA and dissolvable filaments in this printer as well, but I haven’t determined the best settings for these yet.
Our previous work with reverse centrifugation NPN membranes has shown that they may work for cleaning up excess protein from conjugated NPs. This initial success used ~20 nm red fluospheres with membranes from wafer 1070 (10-15%, ~45nm) and unlabeled IgG we were given by a collaborator. In this post we are testing “newer” NPN wafers…
I recently received wafer 567 from Dave for cell culture work. It has many intact membranes but is riddled with pinholes, having only 3 pinhole-free samples. I decided to test them for air permeability and burst pressure, shown below. I also noticed some odd features on the membrane and surrounding Si. They are circular but…
UPDATED 12/12/07 – Added data on albumin. In these gels, the band from beta-galactosidase appears to overlap with phosphorylase b making it difficult to determine which protein passes and which is retained. I have used Mike Bindschadler’s pore imaging software to find the pore sizes of the three membranes I have use to perform succesful…
Wafer 415-T has been delivered to the lab. It was processed with TEOS and annealed at 950 C. There are a few usable samples, especially along the edge of the wafer. Pinhole density increases as you move towards the center. The uniformity across the wafer is good. From left to right, top to bottom: (0,1)…
Transendothelial electrical resistance measurements are expressed in the units . Where the measured resistance is multiplied by the area of the membrane to enable a comparison between measurements in different systems. We have often wondered why, but the reasoning for this normalization is straightforward. Consider the simplified ‘transwell’ geometry where a membrane separates two compartments…
Introduction In prior work by Panteha Torabian and the Michel Lab (RIT’s College of Science), we have seen that treatment of E. coli with different antibiotics can result in changes in the production of bacterial extracellular vesicles (bEVs). In the context of sepsis, this is important because clinicians tend to treat patients with a broad…
