Design and Build your own Centrifuge

MakerSpace Chat
, , ,
1

We all know centrifuge is used to separate substances in a liquid dispersion, based on their difference in density by spinning at very high speed.

Centrifuge is a very useful device in a biology and chemistry lab, right from clinical applications such as separating blood into its fundamental components : RBC, WBC & Platelets and Plasma to research applications such as extracting DNA or to separate cells from their culture medium. Thus it has endless applications.

As centrifuge is sustainably more expensive , we have less access to it, So lets build one and make it (Lab Instruments) more accessible to community, researchers, students and citizen scientists.

Below are the images of centrifuge made out of scrap harddisk.

photo_2020-03-19_12-02-55
photo_2020-03-19_12-02-55960×1280 172 KB
photo_2020-03-19_11-59-33
photo_2020-03-19_11-59-331280×960 124 KB

Scrapped harddisk may not help you in reading/writing data but yes its BLDC motor (around 5500 to 7200 RPM) and heavy metal base will help you to make a centrifuge out of it.

Watch this Harddisk based centrifuge in action.

So the challenge is to build your own centrifuge using or without using scrap harddisk with the following features.

  1. Portable Device
  2. RPM or G setting and display
  3. Timer Countdown setting
  4. Safety Lock
  5. Balanced Rotor must hold atleast four Epis (Eppendorf Tube).
  6. Other required features as per your design.

While design centrifuge you will encounter many interesting things such as principle behind centrifuge, which motor and why, sensor to get RPM, RPM or G, Max RPM or G, why balancing sample tube holder etc. Please create a discussion around it.

So lets get into the building of centrifuge and collaborate with others to for experimentation with centrifuge.

Share your build in progress on this thread.

Please feel free to ask any question here.

Some of the reference to start your journey:

2 Likes
2

It is important to properly balance a centrifuge because an unbalanced machine can damage the rotor, cause catastrophic damage to the machine itself, or even injure or kill lab personnel working in the room. … A centrifuge spins at a high speed in order to separate compounds.

2 Likes
3

@Lewis-H This is true, I assume a way to balancing the system could be made. Do you think something like a spirit Level would be useful?

2 Likes
4

Exactly balancing the centrifuge is equally important implementation, there are many approaches to implement this, one of the digital approach is to get the feedback from the rotor disc setup, which can be accomplished through using Accelerometer and gyroscope data of roll, yaw and pitch angles.

This might seems to be little complicated but yes doable.

2 Likes