We are keen users of modern consumer oriented manufacturing techniques such as 3-D printing or off-the-shelf electronics - with a view to build useful lab equipment for a fraction of the commerical costs. Such "tinkering" is a growing thing these days with new designs being published under open source licences every day. We have already published a number of designs including low-cost microscopes, pipettes or a micromanipulator. More are sure to follow. Beside the hope to save some money on equipment, we want to explore designs to see what can be useful for research and education in financially disadvantaged schools and labs around the world.

For more information, see our recently published paper on the subject. We also did a Reddit AMA on this, wrote for the PLoS blog and now curate their official Open Hardware collection.

Want to learn more? Visit Open-labware.net