3D printing: Designs now on Thingiverse

If you’ve ever browsed our facilities page, you’ll know under ‘3D printer’ it says: “If we don’t have it—fabricate it!” Well, I finally got around to sharing the designs we’ve been using in the lab over the past few years—they’re now all available on Thingiverse.

The 3D printer was purchased as I was nearing the end of my startup period at WHOI (which is time-limited), and I wanted to invest in something that would be useful not just right away, but for years to come. Our printer is a LulzBot TAZ 6, which uses 3 mm filament. We print almost everything in PLA (polylactic acid), though occasionally we use nGen co-polyester when extra accuracy is needed. The printer runs on Cura software.

A few of our designs have become lab mainstays that we’ve printed many times (looking at you, autosampler cassettes). Others were one-offs, like the wall-mounted whiteboard pen holder. Most of the designs are simple, created in TinkerCAD, and all are posted under a Creative Commons Attribution–Share Alike license. That means you’re welcome to use and remix anything I’ve made.

I hope these designs help you solve the same little problems we’ve faced over the years. And if you adapt or remix them, let me know—I’d love to see what you use them for!