Replacing $100K diagnostic chip fab with Shrinky-Dinks and a laser-printer

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/08/replacing-100k-diagn.html

by andrewbadera • 17 years ago

36 13 17 years ago

boingboing.net

michael_dorfman• 17 years ago

Now that's an impressive hack. You, Madam, win the internets.

blhack• 17 years ago

In case you're wondering, I think you're being downmodded for using the term "internets".

(It drives me nuts that when people downvote you, but don't give an explanation)

Given your karma and how long you've been here, you should know better! FOR SHAME!

josefresco• 17 years ago

No he got downmodded because his comment didn't add to the conversation. One-line, humorous comments with no meat are generally frowned upon and become easy targets.

regularfry2• 17 years ago

Anyone know what scale factor shrinkage you get out of this stuff? I'd quite like to experiment with optical effects, but I don't know what feature size you can get and I haven't got any expanded polystyrene handy for testing.

aarongough3• 17 years ago

"When heated in an oven or with a heat gun, the plastic shrinks by about 5/8ths and becomes thicker and more rigid, while retaining the colored design."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrinky_Dinks

Seems like you would be able to get pretty small feature sizes if you had a really high resolution printer to begin with...

regularfry2• 17 years ago

It surprises me that 5/8ths is enough of a difference to be useful, but then I guess it's the way it bunches and forms a ridge that's important for the microfluidics, not the absolute feature size. Hm.

aarongough3• 17 years ago

Topic background info links (for others like me that had no idea what Microfluidics entailed):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microfluidics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrinky_Dinks

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_microarray

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lab-on-a-chip

duh2• 17 years ago

The dearth of women in software development and the preponderance of women in biotechnology are probably not unrelated phenomena.

MikeCapone• 17 years ago

What is the link that you see?

duh2• 17 years ago

I don't see one, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Replacing $100K diagnostic chip fab with Shrinky-Dinks and a laser-printer

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