The vial press installs trays of Genesee Flugs into trays of Genesee Drosophila Wide Vials
Designed at HHMI's Janelia research campus by the jET team, the Vial Press installs trays of 100 plugs into a tray of 100 Drosophila wide vials. Fly vials: Cat number 32-114 Tray Pack Vials, Flystuff.com Vial Caps: Cat number 49-101 Flugs for Wide Plastic Vials, Flystuff.com
Advantages: Installing the flugs into the vials by hand requires several pounds of force each and a twisting motion. Due to the large number of vials that typical drosophila labs use, this causes considerable ergonomic stress on those plugging the vials. The press eliminates the ergonomic stress and consistently installs the flugs at the same height versus the manual method. The press aligns the plugs with the vial and uses a tapered opening to guide and slightly compress the plug into the vial.
Construction: The press utilizes two platforms moved by pneumatic cylinders to install the plugs, and is comprised of custom machined, laser cut, 3D printed and purchased components.
See the individual part drawings for more detail on fabricating each part. See the attached assembly and part CAD files for details of the components needed to build the vial press. Operation: See the included user instructions to operate the press.
Opportunity: Free to make for Non-Profit Research by downloading the design here. See included hardware license.
Rights and designs available for Commercial License. Janelia makes no endorsements or guarantees of licensee products.
For inquiries, please contact innovation@janelia.hhmi.org and reference this repository.
To cite the designs, please use DOI: https://doi.org/10.25378/janelia.25751076