Microfluidic chip / microscopy holders

Handling a microfluidic chip is not trivial. Not that it is something most people do, perhaps, but if you're in the business, you may have experienced this. In order to make the handling a little easier, I made a number of holders, designed for slightly different applications.

The "Device Holder" files fit a standard 25 x 75 mm microscope slide and have an arm designed to hold on to inflow tubing, preventing it from getting tangled or coming loose during handling. The two variants are for one and four slides, respectively.

The "DevStand" files are instead built for collecting effluent. Two of them have smaller viewing ports, allowing for the use of smaller glass slides, while "DevStandEppiesNew" again is built for 25 x 75 mm glass slides. The holders take either two 2 ml Eppendorf tubes or a 20 ml bottle, based on the amount of effluent you plan to collect per time point. The holder supporting two eppies makes it easier to either collect two separate streams of effluent or to easily switch collection reservoirs after a set time point without having to take the holder out of the incubator.

Just bear in mind the importance of finding a suitable sterilization method of your 3D-printed materials before introducing them into the incubator - some plastics may shrink during autoclaving, or be damaged by cleaning agents, and so forth.