[HELP] Making a Rock or Swirl Agitator (Lab Equipment)

[seanspotatobusiness]

I don't have any experience using Lego Technic. I work in a life science lab and would like to determine the effect of agitation on transfection efficiency in my cells of interest. I would like to build a fairly simple device which will either rock or swirl a multi-well plate (Figure 1) and be of sufficiently small profile that I can put it inside a cell culture incubator, to run off a battery. The agitation needs to be fairly gentle, as opposed to clunky, to prevent the liquid culture medium from being ejected from the wells. I'll need a way to set the rate of movement (too fast is more likely to be an issue than too slow) but this does not need to be easily adjustable once set.

I do not anticipate building anything more complex in the future. Could anyone advise me on the most basic set of components that I can buy that will allow me to achieve this? Many thanks in advice for any guidance.

Figure 1.

These are example multi-well plates. In use, the wells are 25-35% filled with liquid. They are approximately 86 x 128 mm.

Edited September 1, 2014 by seanspotatobusiness

[Zerobricks]

Hmm what about using a motor and a train regulator, so you can adjust speed?

[vmln8r]

Seems like all you need is a couple of beams, pins and a motor, with different gear ratios or perhaps a belt drive to change the speed.

As for building the agitators, I recommend this book: http://www.isogawastudio.co.jp/legostudio/toranomaki/en/index.html

[anton1678]

As for sets to buy, for minimum price, I would choose the lego PF set 8293 and any small set that you think fits your needs best.

The total price for this should be around £20-30 (35-50 USD)

This price is from the official lego store, third party dealers and ebay should be much cheaper, $20-30

Edited September 2, 2014 by anton1678

[seanspotatobusiness]

Thanks for the help everyone.

As for sets to buy, for minimum price, I would choose the lego PF set 8293 and any small set that you think fits your needs best.

The total price for this should be around £20-30 (35-50 USD)

This price is from the official lego store, third party dealers and ebay should be much cheaper, $20-30

Hi. It's difficult to guess what set will fit my needs given that they don't seem to list exactly what parts are in them. It doesn't look like I can easily avoid buying superfluous parts. :(

Edited September 2, 2014 by seanspotatobusiness

[MajklSpajkl]

Check out bricklink.com, there you'll find inventory for every set you want...

[zweihander]

Thanks for the help everyone.

Hi. It's difficult to guess what set will fit my needs given that they don't seem to list exactly what parts are in them. It doesn't look like I can easily avoid buying superfluous parts. :(

You can always use brickset.com or rebrickable.com to find out what parts each set contain.

[Freekysch]

Well, this will be some kind of offtopic, but wouldn't it be easier for you to use a shaking incubator ? In case you use LEGO PF, be careful not to be high temp or humidity in incubator.

Edited September 3, 2014 by Freekysch

[seanspotatobusiness]

Well, this will be some kind of offtopic, but wouldn't it be easier for you to use a shaking incubator ? In case you use LEGO PF, be careful not to be high temp or humidity in incubator.

We don't have any shaking incubators that also provide a 5% CO2 atmosphere. The only shaking incubators we have are for microbiology (no CO2).The temperature will be 39 C and the relative humidity will be ~70%. I will pre-heat the device in a sealed plastic bag to prevent the formation of condensation on the electrical components.

I've bought random Lego Technic off Ebay which I'm hoping will contain the parts I need and will follow up with specific purchases for anything it doesn't. I'll let you all know how it works out if you're interested.

Edited September 7, 2014 by seanspotatobusiness