PROJECT SHOWCASE
OpenFlexure Microscope © Bri
By focusing on the design of this open-source, 3D-printed microscope, Dr Richard Bowman’s team is helping scientists to inexpensively detect disease, as David Crookes explains
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Dr Richard Bowman Richard is a Royal Society University Research Fellow and Proleptic Lecturer at the University of Bath. He runs a research group primarily interested in microscopy automating lab experiments using open-source hardware and software.
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Dr Joel Collins Joel is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bath, primarily developing opensource software to control the OpenFlexure Microscope and automate collection of clinical data in Tanzania.
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esearch-grade microscopes don’t come cheap. They cost upwards of £30,000 for a decent model with a motorised stage – putting them outside the scope of many a pocket. As such, many attempts have been made to create low-cost alternatives, and one project – OpenFlexure – could revolutionise the detection of disease in developing countries. Dr Richard Bowman is spearheading the creation of an open-source, 3D-printed microscope that’s able to be adapted for use in labs, schools, and the home. He was inspired by his time as a Research Fellow in the NanoPhotonics Centre at the University of Cambridge, where an early attempt at such a project was falling short because most of the mechanism was based on linear bearings and metal rods. “The bulk of the components weren’t printable and I became curious as to how much of a microscope’s mechanism you could print,” he says. “My first version had basic focus control and an extension tube for a Raspberry Pi Camera Module to turn the stock webcam lens into a basic, but functional, microscope objective lens.” The aim is to create an easily replicable scientific instrument.
Joel Collins, who later joined the project at its home at the University of Bath. “It also means we can achieve really fine sample manipulation of tens of nanometres, for orders of magnitude cheaper than most commercial microscopes.” Unlike traditional microscopes, the project uses an upside-down design. The camera is at the base and the viewing lens is above with the light source at the top. It makes the microscope more stable. “You can arrange things so the sample is consistently close to being in focus when you place it on the microscope’s stage, which is nice,” Richard says. Such work has helped to keep costs down. As a consequence, a student group that became WaterScope saw its potential for cheaply identifying early-stage bacterial contamination in water. Another student project demonstrated how
Time to focus
Initially, Richard sought an ideal way of moving a sample around and picking a region to view. Rather than use sliding rails which require precise machining to be smooth, the eventual design was based on the flexibility of plastic: samples are placed on a table with bendable legs that allow for controlled focus and movement on the X and Y axes. “It uses some fairly simple geometry to convert flexible hinges into linear motion,” explains Dr
OpenFlexure Microscope
Joram Mduda is a collaborator at the Ifakara Health Institute, introducing the microscope into Tanzanian clinics for malaria diagnosis. 3D-printed components replace damaged parts
