Does anyone have any ideas on how to make one of these for a reasonable amount of money, but also of high quality?
I wonder if a vibrator tumbler could be used for a base
somethow, I would suggest talking to the guys in
the machine shop about it,
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crude, but here’s the gist of what I’d think
different link from same page/device
In a nutshell:
flywheel attached to the plate
suspend the plate off something (springs, ball bearings, etc. - strings, in this case)
power supply with adjustable output to drive a motor
attach motor to flywheel as appropriate for gearing/speed/etc.
jiggle away…
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Here’s what I could find out in terms of specs from website and what I’d SWAG the build it takes:
Features:
Benchtop orbital shaker with variable speed range of 0 to 300rpm for gentle to vigorous mixing with a smooth, continuous circular motion
Build requirement: I’d guess a small DC motor with belt drive (to lower speed and loading on motor) drive an eccentric attached to table.
Platform holds petri dishes, staining trays, Erlenmeyer flasks, tubes, or other lab vessels with a total weight of 8kg
Build Requirement: Easy enough with sheet metal brake and shear, spot weld and powder coat
Rotary dials for adjusting speed and time with continuous or timed operations up to 180 minutes
Build requirement: Raspberry Pi or Arduino with interface for motor and timer. LED display.
Orbital motion range of 16mm to ensure even mixing
Build requirement: Dimensional parameter of eccentric
Black mat provides a nonslip surface for platform
Build requirement: You buy it somewhere.
Other items: Rubber feet, plexiglass for various tops, wire for plugs and internals.
Description:
These new orbital shakers include a non-slip shaking platform with standard elastic ties for easy fitting of flasks and conical tubes. Shake continuously or from 0 to 180 minutes. Models 4909G and H have a tachometer with an LED display of rpm. One-year warranty; 220 V models are CE-marked…
No warranty. No CE – but Maker Marked
This is doable, need volunteers from Machine Shop, Metal Shop, Electronics, and Laser to make all the components. At the very worst we’d have a paint, resin, cocktail stirrer at the end.
If we could just add a few Steampunk/Mad Scientist touches to its appearance, there’d probably be more enthusiasm towards building it. Wouldn’t change function - but could be uber cool. You guys need some Jacob’s ladders, sparking things to draw more interest. I mean the scene from Victor Frankenstein’s lab as he fires up his creation … now tell me that isn’t what gets you wanting to do science!
Swirling Jello … meh.
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We should steampunk the science area, It would sraw more folks to it
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thanks for the help lol
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how do I buy the eccentric gears? I don’t really see any online
Windshield wiper motors/mechanisms is one of the most prevalent applications of eccentrics.
It consists of a motor with an arm off it to form the eccentric, and the wiper arm comes off the other end of the arm from the motor.
Watch the video. It’s pretty self-explanatory, as opposed to my trying to describe…
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They are easy to make, the eccentric can attach to gear.
Or it can be a pin on a gear that moves in circle cut into a plate that attaches to the bottom. If fancy, there will be a small bearing so it rolls freely in the groove, but this is a small orbit, so probably a 5mm pint following a slot cut in Delrin or some other Ultra High Molecular Weight Polyethylene. Since the orbit of this shaker is 16mm, the pin would be located 8mm offset from the center. Since gear won’t move the object that is following the in does.
This is probably the easier way to do it.
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It will be difficult to beat this price, though you will need an adapter since it is for 220V: https://www.amazon.com/FinePCR-Rocker-Speed-Platform-Non-Slip/dp/B008DZ2Q24/ref=pd_sbs_328_1?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B008DZ2Q24&pd_rd_r=Y7EK4TGMAS4EVPAAZ828&pd_rd_w=KhFyw&pd_rd_wg=QHy5R&psc=1&refRID=Y7EK4TGMAS4EVPAAZ828
Would not even attempt a build with a price that low.
The reason for the low price is that this is a rocker, not an orbital shaker. Fine for keeping a flat flask with 20 mls of mammalian cell culture going but definitely will not shake 200 mls or more of a bacterial culture at 300 rpm needed to keep it aerated. For that you need a better motor and much more than a nonslip surface, you need a clamp that firmly screws onto the platform, else culture will fly off into the wall.
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This is really good. Thanks for detailed answer. All the DIY shakers and low-cost ones I have seen are very low speed, for mammalian cells. One used a record player turbtable, think the fastest they go is 78 rpm. 0-300 is more like it for bacterial culture. I ma surprised at 16 mm as the orbit radius, that seems far too small to me. Where did you get that spec?
If anything at all is done with synthetic biology in a setting like the makerspace, we really need to be equipped for bacterial cultures of at least 250 ml. Even if your final target for genetic modification is plant or mammalian cells, all the plasmid construction operations are done in bacteria (or yeast, if you have to have a eukaryote). You can buy plasmids ready-made, but high dollar and tiny amounts and in some cases they simply are only available to government or university labs.
chalo, I am working on this… I will build it
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Give a man a plasmid and he clones for a day. Teach him to grow his own plasmids and he clones for a lifetime.
for titer plates very low speed.
Eccentric gears - often found in cheap tools and equipment where concentric gears were intended to be used.