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.
This week, I did a quick discoloration experiment based on Chris’s comment at lab meeting. He wondered if soaking the chips in water for a while would allow potential discoloration-causing contaminants to slowly leech out. I took 2 chips from wafer 622 and soaked them in ~ 300mL DIH20 overnight (with a couple of water…
My PhD exam was postponed (tentatively to early September but it’s up in the air still) due to an impending bureaucratic nightmare, so for the last few weeks I have been running more filter experiments, and I have discovered some interesting trends. While it is generally the case in nanopore experiments that the average dwell…
Using wafer 302 I set up 2 20nm and 2 50nm gold diffusion experiments. After 24 hrs I removed the retentate and filtrate and looked for the gold using the Malvern Zetasizer. We can’t perform the diffusion with both 20nm and 50nm gold because the Zetasizer cannot differentiate between the two sizes. r value Sample…
For a while now I’ve been running diffusion experiments using bacterial alkaline phosphatase (bAP) as my solute of interest in a solution of 50mM tris buffered saline (TBS) and 20 ug/mL BSA. Initially, the BSA was included as a way of reducing the adsorption of the low concentrations of bAP to the device surfaces —…
As part of the ongoing study of NPN membrane filtration characteristics I used the SEM to look at membranes after they were used. Unless otherwise indicated, files with a “t” (top) indicate the chip was membrane side up. “b” stands for the bottom, or trench side. In a standard forward centrifuge setup we expect the…
The Burns-Zidney paper uses streaming potential to measure the zeta potential of polymeric membranes. This means that polymeric membranes should also be capable of performing electro-osmosis, essentially the opposite of streaming potential. For more on this, I have a knowledge page that I’m working on entitled Electrophoretic Cell. I punched out two 30kD cellulose membranes…
