Open Source Science Equipment

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Joshua Pearce, an associate professor of materials science and engineering as well as electrical and computer engineering at Michigan Tech, led the research. Pearce proposes that instead of spending millions of dollars every year replacing quickly obsolescent equipment, that money could be redirected to developing open source tools that are "upgradeable and transformable - they will be continuously updated" using digital manufacturing techniques such as 3-D printing.

What Does Open Source Mean?

Open source denotes that a product includes permission to use its source code, design documents, or content. In production and development, open source as a development model promotes a universal access via a free license to a product's design or blueprint, and universal redistribution of that design or blueprint, including subsequent improvements to it by anyone.

Open-source intelligence (OSINT) is intelligence collected from publicly available sources. In the intelligence community, the term "open" refers to overt, publicly available sources (as opposed to covert or clandestine sources); it is not related to open-source software or public intelligence.

Benefits Could Be Huge

Research would cost less, the equipment would improve each year, grant competition would be less inflamed and educational tools would provide better inspiration and instruction.

Outside the lab, open source tools could help spur innovation and diversity in the science manufacturing market.

While these big effects would take time to grow, Pearce and his Michigan Tech Open Sustainability Technology lab did quantify the impact of open source syringe pumps.

Pearce and his group created 3-D printable models - completely customizable - for $97 for a single pump and $154 for a double pump, using open source CAD software and off-the-shelf motor parts. They posted the designs and codes on Youmagine and Thingiverse; within ten months, they had 1,035 downloads. And each download counterbalances the cost of purchasing a syringe pump.

"You look at our syringe pump, and it's way better than the low end ones," Pearce says. " And it matches performance of high end syringe pumps that anyone can build themselves."

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To calculate a return on investment, the team examined the download substitution value:

Basically, they took the price of a syringe pump and the cost of manufacturing their own tool design - the difference between them represents a savings.

Then they multiplied that savings by the number of people who downloaded the design and made the tool.

Pearce and his team estimate the return on investment for this case study is between 460 percent and 12,000 percent.

Another key point of Pearce's research is that calibrating open source devices and ensuring quality is invaluable. The problem is that there is currently no way to track that validation.

"That's where the initial funding comes in," Pearce says, adding that the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other major funders could make a big difference in improving open source validation. "They can also build a centralized database to house that information - including the code - and make the hardware more accessible."

Until those databases exist, Pearce plans to keep improving open source tools, one syringe pump and download at a time.

Attribution/Source(s):

This quality-reviewed article relating to our Medical 3D Printing section was selected for publishing by the editors of Disabled World due to its likely interest to our disability community readers. Though the content may have been edited for style, clarity, or length, the article "Open Source Science Equipment" was originally written by Michigan Technological University, and published by Disabled-World.com on 2015/09/14 (Updated: 2019/03/18). Should you require further information or clarification, Michigan Technological University can be contacted at mtu.edu. Disabled World makes no warranties or representations in connection therewith.

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