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A one-piece 3D printed flexure translation stage for open-source microscopy.


Change log

Authors

Sharkey, James P 
Foo, Darryl CW 
Baumberg, Jeremy J 
Bowman, Richard W 

Abstract

Open source hardware has the potential to revolutionise the way we build scientific instruments; with the advent of readily available 3D printers, mechanical designs can now be shared, improved, and replicated faster and more easily than ever before. However, printed parts are typically plastic and often perform poorly compared to traditionally machined mechanisms. We have overcome many of the limitations of 3D printed mechanisms by exploiting the compliance of the plastic to produce a monolithic 3D printed flexure translation stage, capable of sub-micron-scale motion over a range of 8 × 8 × 4 mm. This requires minimal post-print clean-up and can be automated with readily available stepper motors. The resulting plastic composite structure is very stiff and exhibits remarkably low drift, moving less than 20 μm over the course of a week, without temperature stabilisation. This enables us to construct a miniature microscope with excellent mechanical stability, perfect for time-lapse measurements in situ in an incubator or fume hood. The ease of manufacture lends itself to use in containment facilities where disposability is advantageous and to experiments requiring many microscopes in parallel. High performance mechanisms based on printed flexures need not be limited to microscopy, and we anticipate their use in other devices both within the laboratory and beyond.

Description

Keywords

physics.ins-det, physics.ins-det

Journal Title

Rev Sci Instrum

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0034-6748
1089-7623

Volume Title

87

Publisher

AIP Publishing
Sponsorship
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/G060649/1)
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/L027151/1)
European Research Council (320503)
We would like to thank Paula Rudall (Jodrell Laboratory, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK) for preparing the Pollia condensata samples. RWB was supported by Research Fellowships from Queens’ College, Cambridge and the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, and partial support was provided by EPSRC EP/L027151/1, the University Teaching and Learning Innovation Fund and the SynBioFund initiative.