Rapid simple and inexpensive production of custom 3D printed equipment for large-volume fluorescence microscopy

摘要

class="kwd-title">Abbreviations: ABS, acrylonitrile butadiene styrene; PLA, polylactic acid; FDM, fused deposition modelling; SDS, sodium dodecyl sulphate; PFA, paraformaldehyde; STL, stereolithography class="kwd-title">Keywords: 3D printing, Additive manufacturing, Optical clearing, CLARITY class="head no_bottom_margin" id="idm139712764626880title">AbstractThe cost of 3D printing has reduced dramatically over the last few years and is now within reach of many scientific laboratories. This work presents an example of how 3D printing can be applied to the development of custom laboratory equipment that is specifically adapted for use with the novel brain tissue clearing technique, CLARITY. A simple, freely available online software tool was used, along with consumer-grade equipment, to produce a brain slicing chamber and a combined antibody staining and imaging chamber. Using standard 3D printers we were able to produce research-grade parts in an iterative manner at a fraction of the cost of commercial equipment. 3D printing provides a reproducible, flexible, simple and cost-effective method for researchers to produce the equipment needed to quickly adopt new methods.