Building Research Equipment with Free, Open-Source Hardware

By Joshua M. Pearce. Science, 2012

529 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A rapidly increasing selection of laboratory equipment can be fabricated with open-source three-dimensional printers at low cost. Most experimental research projects are executed with a combination of purchased hardware equipment, which may be modified in the laboratory and custom single-built equipment fabricated inhouse. However, the computer software that helps design and execute experiments and analyze data has an additional source: It can also be free and open-source software (FOSS) (1). FOSS has the advantage that the code is openly available for modification and is also often free of charge. In the past, customizing software has been much easier than custom-building equipment, which often can be quite costly because fabrication requires the skills of machinists, glassblowers, technicians, or outside suppliers. However, the open-source paradigm is now enabling creation of open-source scientific hardware by combining three-dimensional (3D) printing with open-source microcontrollers running on FOSS. These developments are illustrated below by several examples of equipment fabrication that can better meet particular specifications at substantially lower overall costs.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Mechanical Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/be57b37474ce5b35f83072e19e838682e3953f3b

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In Biomedical Engineering

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

In Mechanical Engineering

Citations in the corpus

Mechanical properties of components fabricated with open-source 3-D printers under realistic environmental conditions (2014, background): “D printable designs) and to make high-value scientific instruments [11] [12].”
The effects of PLA color on material properties of 3-D printed components (2015, unknown): “…material properties, and few studies centered around commercial printers, that limits the applications with the result that prosumers are focusing on lower value products (e.g. toys) at the expense of more sophisticated designs for higher value products like tools or scientific equipment [20–22].”
Conservation technology: The next generation (2018, background): “…2016), experimenting with new ways of harnessing collective skills and knowledge (e.g., opensource collaborative development; Greenville & Emery, 2016; Pearce, 2012), and interacting with industry and the public sector to bring technology and engineering talent into conservation (Joppa, 2015).”
Summary for Policymakers (2022, unknown): “15 These sectors include computer software, electronics, medicine and robotics (Lakhani & von Hippel 2003; Maurer et al. 2004; Pearce 2012).”
Life Cycle Analysis of Distributed Recycling of Post-consumer High Density Polyethylene for 3-D Printing Filament (2014, unknown): “Thus, if one month of the total amount of post-consumer recyclables could fit in the vehicle, this results in an energy consumption of 20.5MJ/kg HDPE for collection and thus a total embodied energy of only 28.4 MJ/kg, which is again about one third of that of virgin material.”
Tightening the loop on the circular economy: Coupled distributed recycling and manufacturing with recyclebot and RepRap 3-D printing (2018, methodology): “D printing method, which is why for example sophisticated scientific equipment can be produced for 1% of the cost of those tools made by traditional methods (Pearce, 2012;2013).”
The metallurgy and processing science of metal additive manufacturing (2016, background): “The use of opensource hardware to make research cheaper and better across a wide range of disciplines is promising.(217) A major limitation of current open-source hardware is the lack of a widely used 3D metal printer.”