I've used several models of these made by this company, including the one torn down. It is very expensive and so are the plates. If I recall correctly, a simple plate (there are different ones with varying chemistry and number of detection zones) was still over 1000 USD per. Unfortunatly multiple competitors came out since that can outperform and do assays cheaper.
I think they hold the patent over this specific electric-field immuno assay and outperform some competitors on specificity for that reason. But yeah, Bio-rad's multiplex Elisa is pretty much as good as this is and cheaper on a per-assay basis
The ironic thing is that despite the massive overkill in the stepper motors and construction. I've seen it twice before (in clinical application where I currently work) that the plate mechanism jams and doesn't read the plate without human assistance. Part of the reason why it is built so robustly is because the materials and samples are so valuable, you don't want to skimp on this stuff. A stack of 25 plates costs $30.000 , and I've seen at least one company that goes through >100 plates per day.Medicine isn't cheap to develop any more :(
Used 60$ on Ebay. I wonder how much gold worth is in them ;D Also you can get higher end chips now, and cheaper. There are now chips in 5-15$ that do match performance of this 15 years Datel design.
While I agree the cost of laboratory equipment can seem absurdly high, one must remember supply and demand. These instruments are not like a car (~17 million sold each year) or a cell phone (over 1 billion sold each year). Additionally, the software that runs the instruments, converts signal to values and allows for the mathematical calculation of concentrations is packaged with the instrument. These items also take hours to develop, test, and ensure compliance with the FDA (in the US) and the EMA (in Europe). Also, one instrument will be used for 10 years, nearly every day by 2-30 people...so the over engineering also has a purpose. Just a different perspective so people can understand that it isn't all about selling something with a high price tag.
11:30 I have seen similar designs with isolating / step-down transformers on *diagnostic devices, where it does not seem to be needed. Maybe they have done this to provide an additional isolation for safety, or to meet any odd lab-grade ISO standard.
You can find few of these and similar on ebay, for about 500-1500$. Plus shipping. In decent condition. It could be a great way to harvest the base plate, rails, motors, encoders, power supply, toroidal transformer, the camera, lens assembly. It is worth a lot in parts, and could be useful to transform into various things. Probably most useful would be the precision motion part with heavy base for something, mostly for imaginging. And the camera, could be useful for astronomy I guess. Some of these cameras separately easily can cost 10000$. Some of the models do have slightly different cameras and sensors.
For a lot of edge tech for labs, you will find a lot of overbuild and unnecessary things, that increase the component cost, but really allows them to not worry or optimize it. Additional few thousands dollars of components aren't really an issue for a machine like that often. All the encoders are a bit excessive, but surely nice for testing and self-testing and remote or local diagnostic of the faulty machines, without full disassembly.
The manins situation sounds like when I worked for a book scanning project... everything on the scanning station (several PCs, monitors, stepper drivers) was multi voltage.... except the fluorescent light ballasts. So, to make it so every station was "identical", stations installed in 240v countries had a massive great step down transformer to run everything.
they have the spare time to put an aesthetically pleasing LED strip there but dont even gonna think twice to remove that bulky toroidal transformer! what were they thinking!
I have a similar looking princeton unit. A friend found it in the dumpster. The bottomboard is missing and the CCD is teared off and all bondwires are broken . The CCD is a bit strange, it is about 30x5mm. The vacuum part and peltier part looks the same. The peltier is the part I'd like to get working again for experiments
Is it possible that the precision encoders are to allow precise plate positioning after they have been imaged? ie it does a broad scan, and then interesting bits of the sample can be re-imaged with them directly under the centre of the lens/ccd? ie 20um ccd might explain high count encoder?
I think the toroidal transformer is for isolation, however, since this is not being connected to a patient I can't really understand why that's in there.
About the toroidial transformer. I have a SEM with the same thing. They have wired the HT-psu to a 110V (huge!) transformer but it is possible to wire the HT-psu for 230V. I think (in my case) it is for isolation, noise. Perhaps its the same for this thing. Thank you for another interesting video!
No, I do not think so. Perhaps it has to do with approval as someone in the comments mentioned. I rewired my HT-supply for 230 and it did not affect the performance of the instrument (afik).
redtails Makes me curious. He was talking about the way to precise stepper motors. Is it possible they moved the sample around to align it proper? Or does that not happen. Might explain the precisiness
I haven't watched the video yet unfortunately. Sample doesn't have to be precisely alligned. AFAIk CCD captures the whole plate, one "channel" at a time. So electrode 1 is powered, which enables luminescence of probe 1 (for instance IL-6), image is captured and electrode 1 switches off. Then electrode 2 is powered, which enables luminescence of probe 2 (for instance, TNF-alpha), then a NEW image is captured. The electric fields are small enough for virtually no cross-talk between probes. The principle of electrochemiluminescence is that luminescence only occurs when there's an electric field AND presence of the target substance. With multi-probe plates, the number of images captured is how many different probes there are on the plate
Highlighting uneccisary wank factor - its disgusting to see the added fat with no value in healthcare. I think your microscope footage is absolutely stellar!
Hi Mike great videos. Would you sell me some stepper motors I want to build a 3d printer. And if you have any spare you need to rehome I could really use some Cheers
Those xy linear tracks are crying out to be made into a 3D printer! If you don’t want them, I’ll happily buy them off you for the purpose. I live near London, so I’m guessing we’re not too far away from each other.
Yeah, those worm drives and stepper motors all look ready for doing business in a CNC machine. I think that he should put in the videos how much he pays for these units, so that we get an idea whether it is worth for hunting such a unit down from Ebay to build something out of them.
I’ve dropped you an email. It might make quite a good video series, the process of converting them into a 3D printer. They look plenty strong enough for light duty milling too. Could be good for prototyping pcbs and drilling enclosures. Should be really accurate too, with those encoders.
If you need to ask the price of this, you can't afford it. That camera lens alone would've cost hundreds if not thousands of $/£ and is really f***ing nice!
I used to assemble medical equipment. We had an optical sensor inside that, 128 px linear CCD. If I recall correctly, that was a few hundred bucks. Broke (due to static electricity) if you left the lid of the antistatic case open for an hour, I think I have a few in my box of "memories". The whole device was like 50k, consumables were on the ordfer of 1k / wk. Medical equipment is crazy expensive.
Hi! Are you maybe interested in selling the peltier stack? Im looking for one for some time now to put in my uhv chamber. Im located in germany, so shipping shouldnt be to much of an issue.
Does anyone know why the metallization on the top of that CCD chip looks so 'dirty'/corroded and 'bumpy'? Is this a normal appearance for metal traces on a die or does it just not matter that much in this application?
mikeselectricstuff; Oh okay, thanks for explaining. I thought it might be, but since you didn't have it open for very long before you micrographed it, I assumed that only the large pieces were dust contamination. Seeing the difference in design philosophy between something like this, and general consumer equipment is really mind blowing. That X-Y motion control system looks like it would be precise enough to make a nice, large 3D printer from... and they literally just use it to bring the plates to the same, fixed position and spit them out afterwards! Also, damn, the air in your workshop is *filthy* ! 8P
Have you ever been contacted by any company who effectively said, "we're not happy about your presentation showing all these 'intimate' details of our product/device. please take down the video that shows such detail"? Maybe "Genome HyperTron" company is jealously protective about their stuff...and afraid that Asian cloners would use your video to nefarious ends. Thx.
Well for one, no reputable medical (or biochem) lab/industry is going to buy their equipment from random Asian suppliers/companies that don't have a pedigree. For another, I can't imagine most cheap clone companies/factories even have the equipment and knowledge to put together a decent clone. And if they do, they don't even need to see one of these videos in the first place most likely. Still an interesting thought though. No idea what the laws in the UK are like, but in the US the company couldn't do much to go after you for something like this afaik. Lastly, by the time these hit ebay dirt cheap they're usually obsolete anyway, and odds are this stuff is patented anyway so any would-be cloner would just have to look up the patents.
It seems they must still cost a fortune. though i got a damaged 5k$ hd projector once for a few bucks that I almost got to a working state again. But color wheel was broken and glueing didn't help :(
Well, I hope that good things arrive in a junkyard in my town. because I find good things like a functional nicolet 350 osiloscope, but, not great things that mike has :(
Protomaker Black Sprint Original 3D Printer was that an area51 game reference? someone actually played that things? but yeah the game is miedocre at best but the crazy email within it are just epic!
That one wouldn't be that great even for that, since it's only 1300x1320 resolution. The one that came out of the Roche DNA sequencer a while back has a 16Mpx cooled CCD, which is far far nicer. th-cam.com/video/2WnGhbub6LM/w-d-xo.html
Resolution is not as critical for astrophotography usually, we're much more interested in the other aspects of these sensors. The massively huge pixel pitch is one of those very interesting aspects. A lot of amazing astro photos have been taken with sub-1k by 1k sensors, but because of the nature of astrophotography (we usually stack dozens, if not hundreds of exposures) we can do things like dithering / drizzle techniques to achieve a much higher final resolution. 16Mpix sensors will over-sample in most telescopes, and that's not really beneficial, it can be quite the opposite! High res sensors have higher optical resolution than the telescope can deliver, and that causes issues.
@@MysticalDork 1300x1320 would be enough, the sensitivity and noise would be probably very good. The ADC board is a bit dated, but would do the job. Similar spec (but smaller, and also useful for faster aquisition) camera for astro this days would be 3000-10000$. If you can get this old MSD machine for 500$ (which is doable), and got a interface card it could be useful. But due to weight and power requirements, obviously it would be mostly useful for stationary setups.
4 videos in about a week? This is unheard of!
Four videos in the span of a week? Fuck yeah.
"Fill it up with vacuum" was my favorite part. :D
And at 26:08 the vacuum escaped... :-(
@@zvpunry1971 You need to be careful when opening it up or you might spill the vacuum all over you ...
What a mess!
I've used several models of these made by this company, including the one torn down. It is very expensive and so are the plates. If I recall correctly, a simple plate (there are different ones with varying chemistry and number of detection zones) was still over 1000 USD per. Unfortunatly multiple competitors came out since that can outperform and do assays cheaper.
I think they hold the patent over this specific electric-field immuno assay and outperform some competitors on specificity for that reason. But yeah, Bio-rad's multiplex Elisa is pretty much as good as this is and cheaper on a per-assay basis
ANOTHER mikeselectricstuff video! You are on a roll and I freaking LOVE it!
The ironic thing is that despite the massive overkill in the stepper motors and construction. I've seen it twice before (in clinical application where I currently work) that the plate mechanism jams and doesn't read the plate without human assistance. Part of the reason why it is built so robustly is because the materials and samples are so valuable, you don't want to skimp on this stuff. A stack of 25 plates costs $30.000 , and I've seen at least one company that goes through >100 plates per day.Medicine isn't cheap to develop any more :(
The L297 can be configured to half step. Maybe they are half stepping, which reduces holding torque. Larger steppers would mitigate that.
Mike - your workshop looks so tidy, clean and well-organised. :)
"Fill it with vacuum" XDDDDDDDDDDDDD
Exceptional as always!
Loving the frequency of the teardown videos! Keep up the good work!
It's like Christmas ... oh I guess it actually was.. ...anyway, a bunch of new Mike videos very welcome indeed
The designer of the machine owns stock in torroidal transformer companies and thats why they had to use that power supply set up. Makes perfect sense.
Beautiful x, y start for a mini cnc project! Oh z too!
Cracking video as always Mike, these microplate readers seem to come in a zillion flavours and they always seem to come with exotic stuff inside
That ceramic A/D is fucking sexy!
You inspire my students. They especially like that your shop, which is - well - not what I require. You have 11 young fans and 1 old one.
That 16-bit Datel A/D is US$498 with lead time of "Call Us" and is on the munitions list.
Used 60$ on Ebay. I wonder how much gold worth is in them ;D Also you can get higher end chips now, and cheaper. There are now chips in 5-15$ that do match performance of this 15 years Datel design.
Instead of scrapping all those expensive over engineered parts, you could have made a juicer out of it.
While I agree the cost of laboratory equipment can seem absurdly high, one must remember supply and demand. These instruments are not like a car (~17 million sold each year) or a cell phone (over 1 billion sold each year). Additionally, the software that runs the instruments, converts signal to values and allows for the mathematical calculation of concentrations is packaged with the instrument. These items also take hours to develop, test, and ensure compliance with the FDA (in the US) and the EMA (in Europe). Also, one instrument will be used for 10 years, nearly every day by 2-30 people...so the over engineering also has a purpose. Just a different perspective so people can understand that it isn't all about selling something with a high price tag.
"These devices take hours to develop, test and ensure compliance ..."
LOL
more like years ...
11:30 I have seen similar designs with isolating / step-down transformers on *diagnostic devices, where it does not seem to be needed. Maybe they have done this to provide an additional isolation for safety, or to meet any odd lab-grade ISO standard.
excellent. thank you.
I've always wanted to get a telecentric lens, that is definitely a monster-sized one! Looks like a 1:1 too, not magnifying or demagnifying.
Spirit chinese telecentrics have gotten quite cheap.
Maybe for a tiny sensor, yeah. Something like 1/3".
This kind of size is definitely not cheap.
+1 for the "wank" factor comment!
I wonder if that big toroidal isolation transformer was also in there to guarantee isolation from mains...
Whoa.... This was way cooler than anticipated especially the microscope die shots and the hybrid module with all the bond wires and random stuff
super nice amount of reusable parts there, and nice looking 2axis platform..
Very interesting! The XY stepper motor setup is nicely made inside a solid Alu base - a good assembly for DIY CNC router
Used microplate techniques for immunology back in the late 60s, but we had to read them by eye! Mind you our plates were about 4-5 times the size.
Oh, late night teardown to keep me awake.
tHaH4x0r It's 2am here, fuck.
Der Keksinator I know your feelings. But his videos are too good to not watch. Well seems that I'll go to sleep past 3 AM :D
You can find few of these and similar on ebay, for about 500-1500$. Plus shipping. In decent condition. It could be a great way to harvest the base plate, rails, motors, encoders, power supply, toroidal transformer, the camera, lens assembly. It is worth a lot in parts, and could be useful to transform into various things. Probably most useful would be the precision motion part with heavy base for something, mostly for imaginging. And the camera, could be useful for astronomy I guess. Some of these cameras separately easily can cost 10000$. Some of the models do have slightly different cameras and sensors.
Love these extreme teardowns, shame the ccd camera could not be re-purposed, would have made for a mean looking "security camera"
For a lot of edge tech for labs, you will find a lot of overbuild and unnecessary things, that increase the component cost, but really allows them to not worry or optimize it. Additional few thousands dollars of components aren't really an issue for a machine like that often. All the encoders are a bit excessive, but surely nice for testing and self-testing and remote or local diagnostic of the faulty machines, without full disassembly.
Oooo Christmas has come late with Mikes' Channel! :D
Looadsa' videos lately.
Cheers Mike! Really enjoying it :)
The manins situation sounds like when I worked for a book scanning project... everything on the scanning station (several PCs, monitors, stepper drivers) was multi voltage.... except the fluorescent light ballasts. So, to make it so every station was "identical", stations installed in 240v countries had a massive great step down transformer to run everything.
Its like an intricate cassette flipping mechanism, I like that it has a 110v-220v donut transformer.
Looks like you scuffed up your nail with that file. If you can swing round the Isle of Man, there’s a chap who may be able to help with a manicure.
Josh Myer And possible having a nice packaged dinner with a bottle of good vodka after that.
Everyone loves a good thick color changing coating every no and then.
22:04 "Fill it up with vacuum"
Is good :)
All this old lab equipment you keep purchasing, I am sure you are now on some kind of watch-list! 😂
Looks like a great base for a DIY laser engraver
I'm subscribed to Mike. Question is whether I'm ready for the information in the newest vids. Always next level.
they have the spare time to put an aesthetically pleasing LED strip there but dont even gonna think twice to remove that bulky toroidal transformer! what were they thinking!
Must be designed by different teams... otherwise they would've used an ARM processor to fade the LEDs :-)
I have a similar looking princeton unit. A friend found it in the dumpster. The bottomboard is missing and the CCD is teared off and all bondwires are broken . The CCD is a bit strange, it is about 30x5mm. The vacuum part and peltier part looks the same. The peltier is the part I'd like to get working again for experiments
Is it possible that the precision encoders are to allow precise plate positioning after they have been imaged? ie it does a broad scan, and then interesting bits of the sample can be re-imaged with them directly under the centre of the lens/ccd? ie 20um ccd might explain high count encoder?
They *knew that you will tear this unit down* this is why they put the high voltage logo there!
I think the toroidal transformer is for isolation, however, since this is not being connected to a patient I can't really understand why that's in there.
if it was never meant for 240v operation adding the transformer is the easy no engineering required fix
True
About the toroidial transformer. I have a SEM with the same thing. They have wired the HT-psu to a 110V (huge!) transformer but it is possible to wire the HT-psu for 230V. I think (in my case) it is for isolation, noise. Perhaps its the same for this thing.
Thank you for another interesting video!
I suspect its to get 4 input voltages rather than just the two?
No, I do not think so. Perhaps it has to do with approval as someone in the comments mentioned. I rewired my HT-supply for 230 and it did not affect the performance of the instrument (afik).
Worth sending the wank factor led strip to Big Clive to reverse engineer ? It would make a good beginner circuit on how mosfets work.
Thumbs up just for using the "wank Factor" saying.
Oh I've used this exact machine (for its intended purpose) not so long ago. Let's see what makes it tick
redtails Makes me curious. He was talking about the way to precise stepper motors. Is it possible they moved the sample around to align it proper? Or does that not happen. Might explain the precisiness
I haven't watched the video yet unfortunately. Sample doesn't have to be precisely alligned.
AFAIk CCD captures the whole plate, one "channel" at a time. So electrode 1 is powered, which enables luminescence of probe 1 (for instance IL-6), image is captured and electrode 1 switches off. Then electrode 2 is powered, which enables luminescence of probe 2 (for instance, TNF-alpha), then a NEW image is captured. The electric fields are small enough for virtually no cross-talk between probes.
The principle of electrochemiluminescence is that luminescence only occurs when there's an electric field AND presence of the target substance. With multi-probe plates, the number of images captured is how many different probes there are on the plate
They really should put sardine can rollers on those metal cans for us.
Highlighting uneccisary wank factor - its disgusting to see the added fat with no value in healthcare. I think your microscope footage is absolutely stellar!
Hi Mike great videos. Would you sell me some stepper motors I want to build a 3d printer. And if you have any spare you need to rehome I could really use some
Cheers
Interesting video again. But your camera work makes me a bit dizzy ;-)
I don’t know .. I’m too weak .. actually enjoy the slow fading light
You could make a cloud chamber with that multistage peltier device. Detect some cosmic rays at home.
Yes but would be pretty small.
You could cool a larger plate, but yep small. 10cm square would show trails.
Those xy linear tracks are crying out to be made into a 3D printer! If you don’t want them, I’ll happily buy them off you for the purpose. I live near London, so I’m guessing we’re not too far away from each other.
make me an offer.
Yeah, those worm drives and stepper motors all look ready for doing business in a CNC machine. I think that he should put in the videos how much he pays for these units, so that we get an idea whether it is worth for hunting such a unit down from Ebay to build something out of them.
I’ve dropped you an email. It might make quite a good video series, the process of converting them into a 3D printer. They look plenty strong enough for light duty milling too. Could be good for prototyping pcbs and drilling enclosures. Should be really accurate too, with those encoders.
good video but the image stabilization makes me dizzy
If you need to ask the price of this, you can't afford it. That camera lens alone would've cost hundreds if not thousands of $/£ and is really f***ing nice!
Simon Tay The camera lens looks so custom it can be compared with the expensive telephoto lenses from Canon or Nikon.. Probably 10-30k per pcs
I used to assemble medical equipment. We had an optical sensor inside that, 128 px linear CCD. If I recall correctly, that was a few hundred bucks. Broke (due to static electricity) if you left the lid of the antistatic case open for an hour, I think I have a few in my box of "memories". The whole device was like 50k, consumables were on the ordfer of 1k / wk. Medical equipment is crazy expensive.
Hi! Are you maybe interested in selling the peltier stack? Im looking for one for some time now to put in my uhv chamber. Im located in germany, so shipping shouldnt be to much of an issue.
Does anyone know why the metallization on the top of that CCD chip looks so 'dirty'/corroded and 'bumpy'?
Is this a normal appearance for metal traces on a die or does it just not matter that much in this application?
I think it's mostly dust from when I opened it.
mikeselectricstuff; Oh okay, thanks for explaining. I thought it might be, but since you didn't have it open for very long before you micrographed it, I assumed that only the large pieces were dust contamination.
Seeing the difference in design philosophy between something like this, and general consumer equipment is really mind blowing.
That X-Y motion control system looks like it would be precise enough to make a nice, large 3D printer from... and they literally just use it to bring the plates to the same, fixed position and spit them out afterwards!
Also, damn, the air in your workshop is *filthy* ! 8P
the mr fusion must be low on fuel.
No need for a discrete D/A converter for this type of application anymore; monolithic will do just as well.
Do you know where I can get this TAXI cable at 18:49 ?
mike you have more free time out of work right?
The toroid also make it all isolated from mains, which might be a big issue for EMI or anything such.
Have you ever been contacted by any company who effectively said, "we're not happy about your presentation showing all these 'intimate' details of our product/device. please take down the video that shows such detail"? Maybe "Genome HyperTron" company is jealously protective about their stuff...and afraid that Asian cloners would use your video to nefarious ends. Thx.
Nope. I think they'd know the answer I'd give them. I did once get a job offer from a manufacturer though!
Well for one, no reputable medical (or biochem) lab/industry is going to buy their equipment from random Asian suppliers/companies that don't have a pedigree. For another, I can't imagine most cheap clone companies/factories even have the equipment and knowledge to put together a decent clone. And if they do, they don't even need to see one of these videos in the first place most likely.
Still an interesting thought though. No idea what the laws in the UK are like, but in the US the company couldn't do much to go after you for something like this afaik.
Lastly, by the time these hit ebay dirt cheap they're usually obsolete anyway, and odds are this stuff is patented anyway so any would-be cloner would just have to look up the patents.
Where du you get all this fanzy equipment?
Ebay mostly
How much did you pay for this device and on avarage?
£100+£45 shipping
mikeselectricstuff; WOW, now that is a sore dick deal! (And not because of the LED wankery either...)
How do you buy those great machines, mike?
It seems they must still cost a fortune. though i got a damaged 5k$ hd projector once for a few bucks that I almost got to a working state again. But color wheel was broken and glueing didn't help :(
Distelzombie, if you cant get a spare part, concider using it to build a tereolithography 3D printer.
Interesting. But I already salvaged and built a handheld microscope out of the optics and used the power supplies somewhere else. Lamp broke too.
Well, I hope that good things arrive in a junkyard in my town. because I find good things like a functional nicolet 350 osiloscope, but, not great things that mike has :(
Ebay those things goes in the hundreds when they are out of order.
Could the toroidal transformer be used for mains isolation.
I dreamed about those toroidal transes in 90s for a home made sound amp...
You get to play with the coolest toys!
it could be anice precise 3d prinder after few mods
34:15 Area 51 Grey Technology whooya
Protomaker Black Sprint Original 3D Printer was that an area51 game reference?
someone actually played that things?
but yeah the game is miedocre at best but the crazy email within it are just epic!
21:08 ANALOG PREANP
For a amateur astronome... that CCD woudl maybe priceless... :D
That one wouldn't be that great even for that, since it's only 1300x1320 resolution. The one that came out of the Roche DNA sequencer a while back has a 16Mpx cooled CCD, which is far far nicer. th-cam.com/video/2WnGhbub6LM/w-d-xo.html
Pierre Plante The DNA sequencer camera was much better :P
Resolution is not as critical for astrophotography usually, we're much more interested in the other aspects of these sensors. The massively huge pixel pitch is one of those very interesting aspects.
A lot of amazing astro photos have been taken with sub-1k by 1k sensors, but because of the nature of astrophotography (we usually stack dozens, if not hundreds of exposures) we can do things like dithering / drizzle techniques to achieve a much higher final resolution. 16Mpix sensors will over-sample in most telescopes, and that's not really beneficial, it can be quite the opposite! High res sensors have higher optical resolution than the telescope can deliver, and that causes issues.
@@MysticalDork 1300x1320 would be enough, the sensitivity and noise would be probably very good. The ADC board is a bit dated, but would do the job. Similar spec (but smaller, and also useful for faster aquisition) camera for astro this days would be 3000-10000$. If you can get this old MSD machine for 500$ (which is doable), and got a interface card it could be useful. But due to weight and power requirements, obviously it would be mostly useful for stationary setups.
Dunno. Looks ok to me. A technological doohickey designed by committee in order to keep unemployable engineers employed 😐
I love your vids. But please, buy a better camera.
暴殄天物啊