Locate Faults With The Leakseeker-89R

May 24, 2024 by Lewin Day 29 Comments

Have you ever needed to hunt down a short circuit, but you’ve had no idea where it is or how it’s happening? As it turns out, there are tools to help in that regard. Enter the Leakseeker-89R.

The device is able to help hunt down short circuits that measure anywhere from 0 to 300 ohms. The device is typically used with two leads on a given pair of traces, and it has a display made up of red, yellow and green LEDs. As the leads are moved closer or farther from the short circuit, the display changes to indicate if you’re getting hotter or colder. There’s also a third lead that can be used to allow testing under more challenging conditions when there is a large capacitance in-circuit with the traces you’re testing.

Fundamentally, it’s basically a very accurate resistance meter, finely honed for the purpose of hunting down short circuits. We’ve featured similar tools before. They can be of great use for troubleshooting. Meanwhile, if you’re building your own test tools in your home lab, don’t hesitate to let us know! We’re always dying for hot tips on the best DIY lab equipment for saving time, frustration, and money.

A Temperature-Sensing Magnetic Stir Bar

April 20, 2023 by Lewin Day 6 Comments

Magnetic stirring bars are the coolest piece of equipment you’ll see in a high-school chemistry lab. They’re a great way for agitating a solution without having to stand there manually and do it yourself. [Applied Science] has now made a magnetic stir bar that features an integrated temperature sensor.

The device is essentially an RFID temperature sensor snuck inside a custom-made magnetic stir bar. The bar is paired with a smart hotplate base that displays the temperature readings. As a bonus, it can detect when the magnetic stir bar is out of place or not in sync, prompting it to slow down the spin motor until the stir bar is turning properly again.

The video also notes that the stir bar could be instrumented for even greater functionality. A Hall effect sensor could measure the magnetic slip angle of the stir bar, and provide useful readings of liquid viscosity. Alternatively, a pressure sensor in the stir bar could potentially measure liquid level based on hydrostatic pressure.

It’s a great quality-of-life improvement for regular lab work. It eliminates the need for bulky temperature probes that often get in the way. We’ve featured some interesting temperature sensors before, too.

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3D Printed Gadgets Make Lab Work Easier

December 15, 2022 by Lewin Day 1 Comment

If you’ve worked in a bio or chem lab, you’ve probably found yourself handling all manner of plastic. Test tubes, fixtures, clamps — there’s a cavalcade of this stuff that fattens up the order books of lab suppliers every quarter. Sometimes, though, the commercial solutions aren’t quite what you need. For [AtomicVirology], the solution was to 3D print custom lab accessories to make work easier.

The tube adapter allows the collection of 60 small samples without having to unload the fraction collector halfway through. That’s a big quality-of-life improvement for staffers using the equipment.

Some of the devices are straightforward, like simple holders for upright storage of centrifuge tubes. Others are fun twists on the theme, like the Millennium Falcon tube holder or one shaped like the Imperial Star Destroyer. Meanwhile, a resuable plastic tube cover serves as a way to protect tubes from light without the fuss of covering them in aluminium foil. It’s less wasteful, too!

Our favorite, though, is a simple adapter for holding fraction tubes in a AKTA fraction collection device. Stock, the AKTA device will hold 30 small tubes in the inside ring, and 30 larger tubes in the outside ring. Thanks to a simple printed part, though, it can be modified to hold 60 tubes of the smaller size. This allows the collection of 60 small fractions in a shorter period of time simply by moving the delivery head from the inner to the outer ring, without having to swap out 30 tubes halfway through a chromatography column, for example.

It goes to show that a 3D printer is good for more than just churning out Pikachus. It’s a Swiss Army knife for solving fiddly little problems without having to rely on some company to injection-mold you 10,000 examples of whatever it is you want. Of course, if you do want to injection mold something, we’ve covered how to do that before, as well.

Tube Tumbler Provides The Perfect Culture

March 27, 2022 by Brian McEvoy 2 Comments

We’ve all had to shake jars of nail polish, model paint, or cell cultures. Mixing paint is easy – but bacteria and cells need to be agitated for hours. Happily, laboratory tube tumblers automate this for us. The swishing action is handled with rotation. The vials are mounted at angles around a wheel. The angular offset means the tubes are inclined as they rise, and declined as they fall. This causes the liquid in the tube to slosh from one side to the other as the wheel rotates. [Sebastian S. Cocioba] aka [ATinyGreenCell] released his plans through Tinkercad and GitHub, and with a name like Sir Tumbalot, we know he must be cultured indeed.

Grab your monocles. Version 2 features a driven wheel lined with magnets to attach tube adapters, and he’s modeled 50mL and twin 15mL tube holders. The attachment points look like a simple beveled rectangle with a magnet pocket, so if you’re feeling vigorous for vials, you can whip up custom sockets and tumble any darn thing. A Trinamic StealthChop chip on a custom PCB controls the pancake stepper, and the whole shebang should cost less than $50USD. We’re wondering what other purposes this modular design could have, like the smallest rock tumbler or resin print rinser.

Making lab equipment is phenomenal for saving money for things that just spin up to a biotech lab.

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Vintage Spectrometer Gets Modern Interface Upgrade

April 1, 2021 by Lewin Day 2 Comments

There’s plenty of specialized, high-end scientific equipment out there running on antique hardware and software. It’s not uncommon for old lab equipment to run on DOS or other ancient operating systems. When these expensive tools get put out to pasture, they often end up in the hands of hackers, who, without the benefit of manuals or support, may try and get them going again. [macona] is trying to do just that with a 740AD spectrometer, built by Optronic Laboratories in the 1990s.

Originally, the device shipped with a whole computer – a Leading Edge 386SX25 PC running DOS and Windows 3.0. The tools to run the spectrometer were coded in BASIC. Armed with the source code, [macona] was able to recreate the functionality in LabVIEW. To replace the original ISA interface board, an Advantech USB-4751 digital IO module was used instead, which dovetailed nicely with its inbuilt LabVIEW support.

With things back up and running, [macona] has put the hardware through its paces, testing the performance of some IR camera filters. Apparently, the hardware, or the same model, was once used to test the quantum efficiency of CCDs used on the Hubble Space Telescope.

Seeing old lab equipment saved from the scrap bin is great, but you can’t always rely on what you want being thrown out. In those cases, you’ve got to build your own from the ground up. Video after the break.

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A 3D Printed Magnetic Stirrer For Your DIY Chemistry Projects

September 3, 2020 by Lewin Day 20 Comments

When mixing or agitating delicate solutions in the chemistry lab, a magnetic stirrer is often the tool of choice. They’re able to be easily sterilized and cleaned, while maintaining isolation between the mechanical parts and the solutions in question. While they can be purchased off the shelf, [Max Siebenschläfer] whipped up a design that can easily be built at home.

The build consists of a 3D printed base, containing a simple brushed motor. This is hooked up to a motor controller fitted with a simple potentiometer for adjusting the speed of rotation. The motor is then fitted with a small 3D printed spinner containing two magnets. A similar 3D printed part acts as a stirrer, and is fitted with a matching pair of magnets, and dropped into the solution. The magnets in the stirrer are attracted to the ones on the end of the motor, and so when the motor spins, the stirrer spins in the solution, with no physical contact required.

It’s a simple way to build a magnetic stirrer at home without having to shell out big money for a laboratory grade unit. We imagine this could be put to fun use for stirring coffee or cocktails, too – if built with a food-grade spinner. More advanced designs are also possible for the eager home scientist. Video after the break.

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Hackable Ham Radio Multitool Contributes To Long Term Survival Of The Hobby

September 18, 2019 by Danie Conradie 28 Comments

Ham radio, especially the HF bands, can be intimidating for aspiring operators, many being put off by the cost of equipment. The transceiver itself is only part of the equation and proper test and measurement equipment can easily add hundreds of dollars to the bill. However, such equipment goes a long way to ease the frustrations of setting up a usable station. Fortunately [Ashhar Farhan, VU2ESE] has been at it again, and recently released the Antuino, an affordable, hackable test instrument for ham radio and general lab for use.

As you can probably guess from the name, it is primarily intended for testing antennas, and uses an Arduino Nano as a controller. It has quite a list of measurement functions including SWR, field strength, cable loss, RF cable velocity, modulation, and frequency response plotting. It also provides a signal source for testing. Its frequency range includes the HF and VHF bands, and it can even work in the UHF bands (435Mhz) if you are willing to sacrifice some sensitivity. The software is open source and available with the schematics on Github.

Most of the active ham radio operators today are of the grey haired, retired variety. If the hobby is to stand any chance of outliving them, it needs to find a way to be attractive to the younger generations who grew up with the internet. The availability of affordable and hackable equipment can go long way to making this happen, and [Ashhar Farhan] has been one of the biggest contributors in this regard. His $129 μBITX HF SSB/CW transceiver kit is by far the best value for money general coverage HF radio available.

See a short demonstration of the Antuino video after the break

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