Hi JR,
I completely agree in principle with all of Patrik's comments.
I have a few more things to add based on my experience working in two very contrasting environments -
PhD and postdoc research in tier 1 universities, versus setting up and working in my garage lab.
Here are my personal experiences:
1. You can buy items off of E-bay at a 10-50% discount compared to brand new items
2. The equipment you will need will depend on the list of experiments you wish to perform (I cannot see that description in your email or Google file)
3. The list of experiments in turn will depend on the 'learning goals' of your community lab (I cannot see that description in your email or Google file)
4. The 'learning goals' in turn will depend on the target audience's intellectual capacity (HS vs. college vs DIYers Vs. pros),
time investment by stakeholders (weekend vs evenings), and your business model vis-a-vis funding - self-sufficient vs. grant-based being approximately on the opposite ends of this spectrum. (I cannot see such details in your email or Google file)
5. If you can reduce capital expense, but still retain the same pot of gold, you would have more for running expenses
- and depending on the type of experiments, these can be non-trivial. This point has been made by others in other posts here as well,
and it is an oft under-appreciated aspect of any research.
6. How much of your lab will be community-based, and how much will be DIY-based? Allow me to explain.
If you go hardcore into DIY, you can build you own laminar flow - I built mine for < $600, and it has an adjustable flow rate of > 100fpm and is more that sufficient for BSL-1. But this will take time for procuring the right items, for the right price. SO it's a trade-off and for such DIY sub-projects to not end up being distractions, it would be best to source experienced personnel to help out. Alternatively, if folks in your own community can build a DIY laminar flow (as in this example), then you would start off with a sense of community and participation already, and perhaps folks in your neighborhood would be already invested?
7. Finally, pardon me for being so blunt in my assessment, this is by NO MEANS an attack on you - in fact, I appreciate that you reached out to this community for advice [ From looking you up. I suspect you may not a(n extensive) background in science ] - which means you are open-minded, hence this point - An important aspect of community/DIY is innovation - if one cannot be imaginative in reducing up front costs and time required for design, build and procurement of equipment, budgeting for consumables etc., I think there'd be very little hope that such a venture would stay afloat. Frugality without compromising on the quality of science is IMHO a large part of innovation. A lot of well-intentioned community labs and DIY projects fail because they do not factor in all of the moving parts...
If you want to discuss specifics, I can connect you to a colleague in my garage lab who can better share all the gory details of equipment choice, procurement, design/build etc.
But it would help if you can provide some of the missing context (2,3,4,6 above), so our suggestions may be better tailored.
Good luck!
Tom
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