MANATEE (MANifold Adapter & Tray for Easy Emulsions)

thingiverse

Here are instructions for making uniform emulsions using a 3D printed manifold attached to a generic vacuum source and a simple Arduino-controlled vacuum release system. The system uses commercially available QX200 microfluidics chips from BioRad QX200™ Droplet Digital™ PCR System and rubber gaskets, and the EvaGreen Droplet Generation Oil. It can save you buying the droplet generator if you want to just make emulsions - we weren’t interested in using it for digital droplet PCR so did not need the droplet reader either. This design could definitely be refined and improved, but as it stands it works just fine to make stable emulsions! If you have a very sensitive vacuum pump that can operate in the 5-15kPa range, then you can just attach that straight to the MANATEE and make your emulsions. We didn’t have that available, so instead made a ‘vacuum release’ circuit which can be attached to a generic vacuum source and then just releases the low level of vacuum needed to generate the emulsions.