Photo from Teun Voeten's newly reissued book on New York's Tunnel People.

Welcome to an exciting round of “name that component”. Here’s your host, Tito! Hi everybody, We are working to design our heated lid so that it can adjust to small differences in the size or height of tubes. The 100 C lid needs to make contact with the caps of the PCR tubes, to prevent [...]

OpenPCR was recently covered in BioTechniques: http://www.biotechniques.com/news/biotechniquesNews/biotechniques-301745.html Enjoy!

Another week zooms by! I’ve been working on sourcing for the aluminum heating block. One thing that’s a bit elusive is finding shops to prototype the block out of 1100 aluminum. Most prototype shops stick to 6061, which is a strong material, but we want as high conductivity and low specific heat as we can [...]

Thank you so much for your overwhelming support for the OpenPCR project. We raised 202% of our goal, thanks to the massive support of 158 people that contributed financially and the hundreds of people that helped get the word out on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and the nightly news! One point I want to highlight — [...]

New cases arrived this week, acrylic and wood! Nodes rock! That is, when you design them correctly. Working with birch wood, I added 1 simple node on each of the notches for the lid parts. The parts “snap” together, and glue doesn’t even seem necessary. With 1/4″ acrylic, I used the exact same sized node [...]

While searching for machine shops — quoted from: http://www.omwcorp.com/how-to-design-machined-parts.html If you want the best out of your machine shop, it’s important to treat them well. People like to do business with people they like, and it stands to reason that favorite customers get special attention. Here are a few do’s and don’ts regarding machine shop [...]

If you think I’m making a lot of posts over the past week, it’s true! I took 2 weeks off of my day job and have been able to get a lot done on OpenPCR. Back to my day job on Monday :\ We are prototyping 3 1/8″ flat aluminum parts for OpenPCR: 1. ~ [...]

This week I designed and sent off requests for new laser cut cases — one wood sheet from Ponoko, and an acrylic sheet from Pololu. Material: One surprise for me — I made a slightly bigger case, and adding on 1″ to each dimension roughly doubles the material. For instance, take a 4″ square, that’s [...]

All right, went and picked up the heatsinks at the UPS office last night. Broken them open while sitting in my car and made a couple quick judgments. Remember, my concerns are: 1. big enough surface area for the peltier 2. cost – $20 to $30 3. overall size and weight The MassCool, while bigger [...]

Just received the 2 test thermal pads in the mail from Digikey. BER165-ND is 3 mm thick and pliable. It runs about about $3.50 per OpenPCR (28 parts fit in a $94 sheet). 3M9601-ND is 2.5 mm thick and very soft, and about $1.20 per OpenPCR (25 parts fit on a $30 sheet) We’ll want [...]

One of the goals of the OpenPCR project is “4. A basic understanding of PCR patents and how they affect this project“. When Josh and I were first discussing OpenPCR back in March, I looked into the original PCR patents and found that they were expired as of March 2005 (US) and March 2006 (Worldwide). [...]

Now that the heat sink is ordered, on to the heated lid. The lid is a major component of the OpenPCR machine. It eliminates the mineral oil that screws up experiments of newbies and professionals alike. More importantly, it’s the one part of OpenPCR that you’ll interact with *every* time you do PCR. It needs [...]

Hi all, Just watching James Bond in Casino Royale and looking for a new heat sink for the OpenPCR machine. Thought I would share the process. We need a heat sink for pulling all the heat away from the aluminum block. Our aluminum block is 4 cm square to match our peltier, which is 4 [...]

Any designers out there who want to make biotechnology that is welcome and accessible? http://www.designsojourn.com/dieter-rams-and-his-10-design-commandments/ • Good design is innovative. • Good design makes a product useful. • Good design is aesthetic. • Good design helps us to understand a product. • Good design is unobtrusive. • Good design is honest. • Good design is [...]

A good discussion on the OpenPCR heated lid over at O’Reilly Answers: http://answers.oreilly.com/topic/1641-silicone-heaters-for-openpcr/page__p__3131&#entry3131 We’ve been thinking a lot about the heated lid, and have had some great ideas suggested. Windell Oskay from Evil Mad Scientist Labs suggested actually making a custom PCB printed with copper trace to form a heater. What an awesome idea, definitely [...]

Thanks everyone for your interest in the OpenPCR project! We’re really happy to be working with Kickstarter to get OpenPCR up and running. Get involved, get kits, get info at our kickstarter home page: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/930368578/openpcr-open-source-biotech-on-your-desktop Best, Tito and Josh

The job of a thermocycler is to implement a set of temperature changes in a reaction volume. The biological requirement for PCR is to implement a set of temperature changes such as this: Repeat 30 times: Denature at 95 C for 30 seconds Anneal at 64 C for 45 seconds Extend at 73 C for [...]

First off, let me extend a warm welcome to everyone that’s taken an interest in this project. Over the past two months I’ve been extremely busy with the design and testing of the OpenPCR machine and getting a prototype ready to demonstrate at the Maker Faire, so haven’t had the time to blog about it [...]

One of our main goals for the OpenPCR project is to enable people to do PCR. With our first prototype we’re getting tools into the hands of people — with off the shelf parts, flexible design, and free control software. What about enabling people to do PCR after they have the tool? What about helping [...]