ASMI: An automated, low-cost indenter for soft matter
Dylan List,
Alan Gardner,
Isabella Claure,
Joyce Y. Wong,
Keith A. Brown
Affiliations
Dylan List
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Boston University, 110 Cummington Mall, Boston, MA 02215, USA
Alan Gardner
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Boston University, 110 Cummington Mall, Boston, MA 02215, USA
Isabella Claure
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, 44 Cummington Mall, Boston, MA 02215, USA
Joyce Y. Wong
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, 44 Cummington Mall, Boston, MA 02215, USA; Division of Materials Science and Engineering, Boston University, 15 St. Mary’s Street, Boston, MA 02215, USA
Keith A. Brown
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Boston University, 110 Cummington Mall, Boston, MA 02215, USA; Physics Department, Boston University, 590 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215, USA; Division of Materials Science and Engineering, Boston University, 15 St. Mary’s Street, Boston, MA 02215, USA; Corresponding author at: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Boston University, 110 Cummington Mall, Boston, MA 02215, USA.
The automated soft matter indenter (ASMI) is a platform for rapidly performing mechanical characterization of samples with elastic moduli in the range 7 kPa to 67 MPa with a sample acquisition time between 1 and 10 min. It is a low-cost system based upon open-source software, a modified mill, and an educational force sensor with a total bill of materials <$500. This system tests batches of up to 96 samples based on a standard well-plate sample holder without requiring any human intervention. Using the ASMI, users can obtain mechanical data in a programmable manner that enables high-throughput workflows, precisely testing time-dependent phenomena, and integration with other processing steps for closed-loop optimization.
