The first professional microscope printed in 3D has a negligible cost and assembles in 3 hours

As soon as 60 dollarscompared to a professional microscope that can even reach $ 18,000, without considering the costs of maintenance and spare parts. This is the cost of the first microscope, fully functional, made until the last piece with a 3D printing machinery. The incredible and economic innovation was possible thanks to the work of a group of researchers within the Openflexure project, an initiative launched by Bath University and Cambridge University and which has already brought low cost microscopes to over 50 countries, including The Antarctic Bases.

Just have a 3D printer And thanks to the open source technology made available by researchers, You can produce the pieces and assemble your work tool in about three hours. And the lenses? Just their cost has always represented a big problem, but thanks to a team from the University of Strathclyde, this complication has always been resolved with a 3D printed.

From the press to the laboratory. Everything is made possible by the progress of 3D technology that allows you to also create professional optical lenses. The team used a printer Mars 3 Pro to create A high -quality photopolympizing resin lens With performance comparable to those available on the market: a diameter of 12.7 mm and a focal length of 35 mm.

Once assembled, the microscope is already ready for use, but the researchers have gone further, integrating an economic video camera into the deviceone luminous source and a Raspberry Pi processor to expand the possibilities of analysis. Despite these additional components, the final price remains less than 60 dollars, making it tool accessible to schools, independent researchers and workshops with limited resources.

Surprising performance. If you think that such an object, weighing about 3 kg, do not have a level of acceptable performance, you are wrong, on the contrary, the results obtainable with this 3D-PINTED microscope are comparable to those of much more expensive devices.

The researchers tested him by analyzing a sample of blood and a section of renal tissue taken from a mouse, confirming that the device It offers a visual field of 1.7 mm and a spatial resolution of 5 micrometersenough to distinguish individual cells and subcellular details such as kidney tubules. In short, the images produced are clear and detailed, without there being a drastic reduction in quality.

A versatile future. The introduction of this innovation is potentially intended to change the accessibility to scientific instrumentation, without considering that the possibility of adapting lenses with different enlargements and openings, already provided by the creators, opens the way for more complex applications.

Tools like this could become fundamental for the diagnosis on the field in developing countries or in falcidal areas from warbut also for scientific teaching and even for the Citizen Sciencethe amateur science of each of us, allowing everyone the exploration of the microscopic world.