Gel Electrophoresis Comb

prusaprinters

About This Project:This is a gel electrophoresis comb recreated based on an Edvotek Comb. This tool is used to create the wells in gel for electrophoresis. This design is the cumulative work of multiple people. You can read more about the original design here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2851238 There are 3 versions of this comb, each with a different amount of spikes/teeth. There are combs to create 5, 8, and 10 wells with one comb. After printing, there will be some leftover filament between the teeth that needs to be removed. The easiest way this can be done is with a heat gun. Apply heat for a few brief seconds, so that the extra filament can heat and shrink away. Then, being careful not to change the shape of the comb, let it cool and harden. Or, you can use a hair drier and heat for a bit longer, or just remove the extra filament manually. The goal was to replicate the comb as closely and as accurately as possible. The comb needs to be the correct depth and move as little as possible when in the gel. The Design Process:The first original 3D printed comb (from link above) looks like this: A few years later, we were given this comb to replicate: The design to replicate this comb initially had “arms” on the sides of the comb with bumps on the end to keep it in place while in the gel. It took multiple modifications to get the right fit. Here are some of the combs we printed as we changed the design: The final draft of this comb design looks like this: But ultimately, this design was a bit too wobbly and was off in measurement by 1 mm. This is a lot, since the comb needed to be very precise in size and sturdiness. We took the top part of the comb from the original design (see link in About This Project) and the bottom part of the comb from the design with the arms, and put them together to get a new design. When we printed the new design for the first time, the bottom part of the comb was a little too thin and broke easily: We changed the thickness of the comb to be a little wider and match the thickness of the top part of the comb, to get the final design. The comb we were given had 8 teeth on one side and 10 on the other, so we printed 2 versions of the comb, one with 8 teeth and the other with 10 teeth. The final design is snug in the container and is more stable than the original comb. We then started to mass produce the combs, color coding them to keep track.