Engineer Yuksel Temiz got so fed up with the limitations of expensive microscopes that he built his own… out Lego.
Futurism interviewed Engineer Yuksel Temiz about his job photographing extremely tiny subjects as a microelectronics engineer at IBM’s Zurich Research Laboratory.
In laymen’s terms, Yuksel job involves dealing with microfluidics. Tiny, liquid-based circuits that, instead of using metal wires rely on the flow of liquid through hair-thin channels like a microscopic canal system.
This type of tech is critical in modern diagnostic tools that can take in and analyze samples (for example analysing a medical patient’s blood or saliva) but the problem Yuksel and his team face is that to actually develop and test those tools they have to rely on extremely expensive powerful microscopes.
Despite the cost, these microscopes have limitations and Yuskel got so fed up with them that he built his own. Impressively his microscope clocked in at only $300 because he made it out of Lego bricks. The device not only worked but images taken on it has been published in everything from Science Advances, Scientific Reports to Biomedical Microdevices!
Early prototypes of the design were completely 3D printed, but Yuskel moved over to Lego to allow the design to be more modular.
Best of all. You can build your own. Yuksel has released the designs so now anyone can have a cutting edge microscope providing they have the time, and bricks, to build it.
You can read the full interview with Yuskel at futurism.com
