Exploring the Utility of 3-D-printed Laboratory Equipment

Abstract

Many laboratories utilize different types of opto-mechanical positioning devices in their experiments. Such devices include lateral stages, which provide 1-dimenstional translational movement, 3-dimensional translation stages, and laboratory jacks, which provide a convenient way of changing the vertical position of a sample. Recent advances in and affordability of 3-D printing have opened up a variety of possibilities, not only providing versatile and custom-designed laboratory equipment but also reducing the cost of constructing typical laboratory opto-mechanical positioning stages. Here, we present the possibility of printing typical linear stages, thereby constructing a full XYZ stage. In addition, a vertical laboratory jack, which utilizes a scissor format, has also been printed using polylactic acid (PLA) filament. The design of these systems required modeling the strength of material to estimate the deflection, which was conducted by finite element analysis. The effectiveness of the proposed 3-D-printed positioning devices was tested by measuring the stroke and the repeatability. As an example of application, a multispectral reflection imaging device was constructed with the help of 3-D-printed linear stages and a laboratory scissor jack.

Keywords

• 3-D printing
• linear stages
• laboratory scissor jack
• multispectral imaging