[DIYbio] Re: DIY Labware review

Hi Bostjan,

This looks like a great resource. I have been working on a table which details very similar (but less detailed) information to your review. I will try and put what I can in your format and add it to the review.

One thing that I think would be worth noting is that sometimes multiple DIY options for the same piece of equipment can be categorised into two groups: 1) cheap and easy to make and often works just well enough to get by with; 2) more involved to build but gives much better results.

Both types of DIY equipment are valuable - sometimes you only need a piece of equipment once, sometimes a lab may not have enough time / money to build the more involved version. My own notes have attempted to capture both the minimum el-cheapo version and more solid DIY version for each piece of kit and give recommendations as to which option is best depending on how much budget is available. I shall attempt to integrate this into your review.

Additionally, my experience from London Biohackspace is that the best option for hardware is often cheaply bought / donated (free) 2nd hand commercial lab equipment or repurposed catering/medical/tattooing equipment. This sort of equipment has the benefit of not having to be built from scratch - thus making setting up a working lab much quicker and in the  case of free donations even cheaper than DIY equipment. The reason this is so effective is that, although wetlab biology has evolved over the past 20 years, it's mainly the reagents which have changed and not the machinery - new centrifuges do the same thing as a 30 year old model, hot water baths still just heat water, the important parts of a PCR machine haven't changed much since the 90s. The only major difference between new equipment and equipment that is 10 years old which university labs are often willing to donate for free is the absence of touch screens!



On Sunday, 17 April 2016 15:31:44 UTC+1, bostjan wrote:

Hello everyone!

This is my first post, so let me introduce myself shortly, I'm Boštjan and while a trained Biologist, I'm new in the DIY bio community. I work at IRNAS Institute, where we are setting up an open biolab/biohackspace, which is located in Maribor (Slovenia). Together with my colleagues (who are mainly engineers) we are setting out to develop DIY lab equipment, which will be comparable to the commercial props in terms of functionality, but much more affordable. To not "reinvent warm watter", we started making a review of existing DIY equipment and how it compares to the commercial counterparts, whether it is feasible to make etc. 

You can find it on github: https://github.com/symbiolab/bio-labware/blob/master/000_bio-labware_overview.md

Hopefully we will soon be able to publish some designs of our own. The review is not completely finished yet, but with the development of DIYware, let's hope it never is. In any case, maybe some of you will find it interesting, I know that there are many collections of DIY stuff available already, however, we tried to structure it a little in terms of methodology and add some context. I would very much appreciate any comments and suggestions for improvement, as we probably missed some things and perhaps misrepresented others. I wish you all a very pleasant weekend!

Cheers,

Boštjan