Category | Industrial Design

The below is a gel showing PCR reactions from the final OpenPCR prototype that will be used for our kit production. This experiment was done to validate various polymerases rather than test OpenPCR, but thought you may want to see it. Lane 1 at the right is a control with no polymerase. Lanes 2 - 4 show amplification of a ~1kb amplicon with different polymerases/salt concentrations. Lanes 3-4 have a different loading dye, but pay attention to the fluorescent DNA band (imaged with GelGreen / Invitrogen Safe Imager). This is just an early glimpse - when we release the final machine kit,...

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A while back, we mentioned the excitement of sending an OpenPCR off to the Presidential Commission on Bioethics. After all that hard work, you might think our prototype would come home for some R&R. Instead, it headed onto Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where it was featured in an art show in Enschede by the Joris Laarman Lab, along with lots of other cool experimental devices. Congrats to the Lab, and Anita and Nora for their hard work. Here's a few shots from the exhibit. Enjoy!

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Hi all, We get a lot of wonderful comments from all of you on the OpenPCR blog. I wanted to highlight one recent post that I really liked. Tom Benedict posted the following rules of thumb on our Dieter Rams 10 Principles for Good Design post: - Good design uses as much commercial off-the-shelf as possible. (e.g. don’t re-invent the screw standard if you can use screws from the hardware store or McMaster Carr.) - Good design provides for “getatability” of the parts. This term was lifted from an article in American Machinist from the early 1900's. (Corollary – If you design one part...

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From Eric Reis' blog, written by Ronald Mannak. (Thanks to Josh Perfetto and Matt Bertram for recommending it!). Excerpt: The prototypes The next day we started building the first prototype to see if the sensors actually behaved like they were supposed to, and to see if we could measure the sideway movements. The prototype was crude. Joris taped sensors on his arms with duct tape and started drumming in the air with wooden drum sticks (that did not contain any electronics). We connected the sensors to a seven year old pc with an Arduino-like interface that ran a simple drum program we developed....

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Hi rock stars, Many thanks to the thoughtful, smart suggestions in Name that component!, from Kyle, David, AdamT, Kyle@otyp, and Ben. All together, we worked through the panini/linkage idea, browsed camera shops to find ball joints, and really set out to get the best design that's easy to build. That said, it can be impossible to find off the shelf parts to bring a new design to reality. More specifically, I'll say that my current source for searching (McMasterCarr) has lots of really *big* things, lots of door hinges or refrigerator hinges, but not so much in the *small* side of things. Is there...

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Update: 9/25/2010 to http://openpcr.org/2010/07/treat-your-machine-shop-professionally/ Good comment from mo - spread the love around. I want to point out that the relationship with your machine/PCB/acrylic/wood shop can be challenging! It's important but not necessarily easy! If you can't meet in person it's tougher to build repertoire over email or telephone, no matter how charismatic you are. And though I'm usually close to my email, people in shops are on tools and machines most of the time. A phone call is a lot quicker and more personal, but conversations on the phone often lead to miscommunications...

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New cases arrived this week, acrylic and wood! Nodes rock! That is, when you design them correctly. Working with birch wood, I added 1 simple node on each of the notches for the lid parts. The parts "snap" together, and glue doesn't even seem necessary. With 1/4" acrylic, I used the exact same sized node as with the birch which didn't work out so well. Acrylic is a lot less flexible than wood. I ended up just sanding off the nodes on the acrylic parts to get them to fit together correctly. (I'll read up on what size nodes to use with acrylic, or comments are appreciated!) This was my first...

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All right, went and picked up the heatsinks at the UPS office last night. Broken them open while sitting in my car and made a couple quick judgments. Remember, my concerns are: 1. big enough surface area for the peltier 2. cost - $20 to $30 3. overall size and weight The MassCool, while bigger in all dimensions, just isn't big enough for the 4 cm square peltier. We would still need an aluminum plate adapter between the heat sink and the peltier. The Titan on the other hand has the perfect sized surface for the 4 cm square peltier. It's MASSIVE though. --- I'm designing a quick...

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Any designers out there who want to make biotechnology that is welcome and accessible? http://www.designsojourn.com/dieter-rams-and-his-10-design-commandments/ • Good design is innovative. • Good design makes a product useful. • Good design is aesthetic. • Good design helps us to understand a product. • Good design is unobtrusive. • Good design is honest. • Good design is durable. • Good design is consequent to the last detail. • Good design is concerned with the environment. • Good design is as little design as possible.

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A good discussion on the OpenPCR heated lid over at O'Reilly Answers: http://answers.oreilly.com/topic/1641-silicone-heaters-for-openpcr/page__p__3131&#entry3131 We've been thinking a lot about the heated lid, and have had some great ideas suggested. Windell Oskay from Evil Mad Scientist Labs suggested actually making a custom PCB printed with copper trace to form a heater. What an awesome idea, definitely want to try it out. I also found this great "wire making" tip on the EMSL site, looks good for fixing the 'rats nest' of wires we run into from time to time and thought I would share:...

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