[3dem] 3D printed cryo-grid boxes

[Matt Swulius]

Hi Davide,

I'm a little late to this thread, but wanted to add my experience.

I've been using 3D printed cryo boxes exclusively for the last year. There
are pros and cons. The biggest benefit is price. My institute only charges
me for the material (3-5 cents/gram). Each grid box is less than a gram, so
I can print an array of 25 boxes for around a dollar! The lids are
printable, but it's difficult to print lids clear enough to see through and
tell if there is a grid in the slot without opening it up (not a huge
deal). I have not tried printing the lid style that you posted, so I can't
really comment. The printed lids are not entirely smooth either. For these
reasons, I currently purchase the flat, clear lids that are held in by a
screw and use them with my boxes just because I like them more than the
ones I print (item 160-43 at ted pella
https://www.tedpella.com/grids_html/gridbox.htm#_160_40). It adds to the
price/box, but still reasonable.

The downsides to consider are that the plastic absorbs ink from markers and
cannot be easily erased by ethanol for use with another sample, but when
they cost so little for me to print it doesn't really matter. Also, the
plastic seems to expand/contract at a different rate than the teflon screws
that are typically used with this style of lid and once they are cold, it's
difficult to loosen the screw. I've largely gotten around this by using a
short tapered metal screw from the hardware store that has relatively broad
threading to cut down on the friction between the box and the screw, but it
certainly isn't perfect. Additionally, the metal screw makes the grid boxes
top heavy and a slightly annoying to handle sometimes.

Here are the files I have been using. In our experience, printing them at
the smallest possible layer thickness with the highest infill yields the
best results, but we have not extensively tested these parameters.

I'm happy to discuss more if you end up going this route.

Cheers,
Matt

On Thu, Jun 13, 2019 at 11:38 AM Davide Zabeo <davide.zabeo at gu.se> wrote:

> Dear everyone,
>
>
> Thank you for all of your kind replies! I did not expect so many good
> suggestions and they will all be very helpful.
>
>
> Best wishes,
>
>
> Davide
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Zhijie Li <zhijie.li at utoronto.ca>
> *Sent:* 13 June 2019 03:31:59
> *To:* Davide Zabeo; 3dem at ncmir.ucsd.edu
> *Subject:* Re: 3D printed cryo-grid boxes
>
>
> Hi David,
>
>
> Here are some of my designs:
>
>
> https://github.com/zhijie-li/cyoEMtools
>
>
> The cryo grid box is of a square shape. So I also put a vitrobot stand for
> the square boxes.  The stand will contract quite a bit in LN2 so please
> test with your LN2 container first.
>
> I also suggest using a 0.3 mm nozzle for printing the cryo grid boxes to
> make the corners as sharp as possible.
>
>
> Zhijie
>
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* 3dem <3dem-bounces at ncmir.ucsd.edu> on behalf of Davide Zabeo <
> davide.zabeo at gu.se>
> *Sent:* Monday, June 10, 2019 5:22 AM
> *To:* 3dem at ncmir.ucsd.edu
> *Subject:* [3dem] 3D printed cryo-grid boxes
>
>
> Dear all,
>
>
> In our lab we would like to try 3D-printing cryo-boxes to store plunge
> frozen cryo-grids (attached photo as reference).
>
>
> Has anyone tried this before? Does anyone have a blueprint of it?
>
>
> Any help is appreciated! Thank you.
>
>
> Best wishes,
>
>
> Davide Zabeo
>
> PhD student
>
> Johanna Höög Lab
>
> Department of Chemistry and Molecular Biology
>
> University of Gothenburg
> Visiting Address: Medicinaregatan 9 C, 41390 Göteborg
> Postal Address: Box 462, 40530 Göteborg SWEDEN
>
> _______________________________________________
> 3dem mailing list
> 3dem at ncmir.ucsd.edu
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>


-- 
Assistant Professor
Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Penn State College of Medicine
Hershey, PA
717-531-2026
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