MULA, a DIY 3D-printed pipetting robot, enabling accurate liquid handling for chemistry and biology laboratories

Abstract:

The implementation of automation has already had a considerable impact on chemical and pharmaceutical industrial laboratories. However, academic laboratories have often been more reluctant in adapting such a technology due to the high cost of commercial liquid handling systems. We present here a detailed description of the setup, validation, and utilization of a multifunctional liquid automation (MULA) system that can be used to automate various chemical and biological tasks. Considering that such a setup must be highly customizable, we also designed MULA with respect to modularity, providing detailed insight as far as possible. Including all 3D-printed parts and the used Hamilton gastight micro syringe, the total construction cost is approximately 700 €. This allows us to achieve a highly reliable and accurate system that exceeds the precision of a classical air displacement pipette while still retaining the ability to use closed vial (septa) setups. To encourage other groups to adapt this setup, detailed instructions and tips for every step of the process are provided, along with the complete CAD design of MULA and control code, which are freely available for download under the CC BY NC 3.0 license.

This Printables model includes the 3MF files for all 3D-printed parts that are needed to build our liquid handling robot “MULA”.

We decided to upload the parts also on printables to make our project more visible to non-academic individuals :)

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If you are interested we also offer a custom kit service with all the parts and prints. 
Just contact us here on printables or via mail: [email protected]
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Demo Video: 
 

If you are curious from reading the abstract and want to know what this project is about, make sure to check out the main article below!


The main article (openly available) describes the whole process of building and initializing MULA (you will also find the complete BOM and a demo video in the supporting information here):
https://www.hardware-x.com/article/S2468-0672(24)00075-0/fulltext

The mendeley data repository contains all other relevant files and information (assembly manual, software, cad files):
https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/3m3t4f9ft3

The models are sliced for an standard MK3S+, although we printed the parts with a MK3S+ containing a larger 0.6 mm nozzle.