Post date: Jan 12, 2012 12:21:43 AM
Dr. Delson,
Per your request, we've detailed the progress made from our sponsor meeting yesterday with Dr. Strain. We've published it to our site **HERE** and attached it below.
Just as you said during our progress report, we all agreed that there will be more resources put towards researching different methods of lifting the cells; namely the "piezoelectric", "vacuum", and "magnetic" methods outlined in the risk reduction report. An apparatus (manual stage; linear slide) will be designed to rapidly test all three of these prototypes and weight the pros and cons of each.
Tentative milestones are outlined below:
1. Create testing station (High Priority)
Camera / Camera mount
Camera has been provided by Matt but he reccommended we purchase a USB C-mount camera.
Need dummy beads/ arrays / titers
z axis
Manual Linear Stage
mount for stage, mount/clamp for picking tool.
Automatic Linear Stage
Stepper motor( Steve Roberts)
Motor controller/ driver
2. Test
Vacuum
piezo pipet, and pipet tips
electronic components neccessary for piezo pipet
Sterilization?
Capillary
tubes
sponsor has low confidence
Paramagnetic beads
needs beads and magnet
test between ferromagnetic vs. electromagnetic
Hydrophilic
PDMS + PEG tip
We spoke with Dr.Strain regarding our goals for week 2, and he provided three different cell sized beads (dummy cells),
a linear slider, 10x lens and camera (BNC connection), piezoelectric pipette tips and advice on approaching the tests. He provided some suggestions for suppliers.
With our goals/milestones written out we are planning on splitting the tasks into building the manual stage and
collecting the different method tools. We will have our testing station set up by next week and can begin testing methods late in the week. We will first test the piezo pipettes, then capillary tubes (if the proper size tube can be purchased <30microns), paramagnetic, and then hydrophilic.