Pick-and-place machines are used to quickly and precisely place electronic components onto printed circuit boards. The open source IndexPnP with software powered by OpenPnP is a new cheap DIY pick-and-place machine. Commercial options cost thousands to tens of thousands of dollars. There are several open source designs already out there, a portion of which are […]
Tag: DIY

3D Print a Stethoscope
Here at Lab On The Cheap HQ we’ve received a few requests to look into ways that people might easily and cheaply transmit audio from a stethoscope over their phone to a medical practitioner they are teleconferencing with. While we are looking into the best solutions for that problem, we’ve noticed a lot of methods […]

Hack a kitchen scale for lab use for just $20
Common digital kitchen scales have a surprisingly high sampling rate in their sensor, but any data logging using a kitchen scale is limited to the sampling rate of the scientist writing down the data. But now, there is a preprint paper on hacking a digital kitchen scale to record data to a computer by D […]

Make a polarimeter for $350
A polarimeter is used to characterize a sample by measuring the rotation of polarized light when it interacts with the sample. They can cost upwards of ~$10,000, but a $350 DIY high-resolution polarimeter has recently been detailed in a paper by Andrew Harvie , Tom Phillips, and John deMello. The bill of materials for the […]

FED3, an open source Feeding Experimentation Device that you can DIY or just buy!
The Feeding Experimentation Device v.3 (FED3) is a smart pellet dispensing device originally designed for training mice on nose-poking tasks. Contributors to the product include Lex Kravitz, Sophi Kravitz, Bridget Matikainen-Ankney, Andrew Hardaway, Mohamed Ali, Katrina Nguyen, and Filipe Carvalho. FED3 is battery powered and designed for home cages. It collects information on nosepokes and […]