[3dem] FW: 3-D printable CARTRIDGE boxes!

[Bowman, Valorie D]

Valorie Bowman

vdb at purdue.edu

Senior Research Electron Microscopist
Purdue Cryo EM Facility
Purdue University
________________________________
From: Bowman, Valorie D
Sent: Friday, October 23, 2015 8:17 AM
To: Michael Saur
Subject: RE: [3dem] 3-D printable CARTRIDGE boxes!

Dear Michael,
Fantastic idea!

And for those of us using a Titan or other microscope with an autoloader requiring grids in cartridges we could also print modified cryo grid boxes with slots specially sized for cartridges.  Thanks to a very talented machinist we have hundreds of cryo grid boxes, but we are constantly running out of those boxes with the wider slots required for grids loaded into cartridges.  I've modified several myself with a drill press, but it's time consuming.

Imagine being able to print them.  Wow, I love it!

Valorie Bowman

vdb at purdue.edu

Senior Research Electron Microscopist
Purdue Cryo EM Facility
Purdue University
________________________________
From: 3dem [3dem-bounces at ncmir.ucsd.edu] on behalf of Michael Saur [2michael.saur at gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 22, 2015 5:59 PM
To: 3dem at ncmir.ucsd.edu
Subject: [3dem] 3-D printable grid boxes

Dear community,

if anybody is interested, I would like to share 3-D printable grid boxes with you.

We recently purchased an FDM 3-D printer and with it came new possibilities of supplying our cryo-EM facility with useful things. Since grid boxes are fairly expensive for what they are, I modelled some and printed them. After tweaking the design in terms of screw hole size etc., I now have a working print which we have successfully used in our lab for a couple of weeks. The grid boxes survive cooling and even heating up with a hair dryer many times without any problems. As you can see in the attached images, I modelled the standard diamond shape but also a variant of the available cross-shaped holes (which for us are much easier to use since grids are never sticking to the side so that you damage them with the tweezers). Printing is fairly easy and takes 10 min per grid box. We used standard PLA filament so far.

The material costs are approx. 0.02 Euro for the box, 0.2 Euro for the screw and whatever you spend for lids. Plus electricity and running costs for the printer of course (which should be negligible).

I can provide you with the actual .blend files of the design (in case your printer needs some tweaking of the central hole for fitting the screws), the CURA print profile that worked best for me and/or the stl-file. Just write me an E-mail (directly to me so that we don’t spam the group) telling me which files or further information you would need and I’ll send it to you.

Of course, if there is any legal issue with me providing these things, please also let me know ASAP! I had a look in patent data bases, but I could not find anything. Since, to my knowledge, these boxes are around in the same design since the ‘70s, I don’t expect any patent issues. Still, please let me know if there is anything and I will stop any sharing of the designs.

Cheers,

Michael






------------------------------------------------------------

    Michael Saur, Dr. rer. nat.

    Max Planck Institute for Molecular Physiology
    Department III, Structural Biochemistry
    Raunser lab
    Otto-Hahn-Straße 11
    Room B2.25
    44227 Dortmund

    Phone: +49 231 - 133 2312
    E-mail: michael.saur at mpi-dortmund.mpg<mailto:michael.saur at mpi-dortmund.mpg>.de

------------------------------------------------------------



[cid:BB7D91AD-D0EA-4A01-9A7A-66A96DD79C8F at client.mpi-dortmund.mpg.de]


[cid:76A9E999-5322-4334-A479-75EAA120043E at client.mpi-dortmund.mpg.de]



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.ncmir.ucsd.edu/pipermail/3dem/attachments/20151023/a9022853/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image1.jpeg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 29851 bytes
Desc: image1.jpeg
URL: <http://mail.ncmir.ucsd.edu/pipermail/3dem/attachments/20151023/a9022853/attachment-0002.jpeg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image2.jpeg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 80380 bytes
Desc: image2.jpeg
URL: <http://mail.ncmir.ucsd.edu/pipermail/3dem/attachments/20151023/a9022853/attachment-0003.jpeg>