What to do with used fancy-shmancy genetics equipment?

February 21, 2008 4:05 PM

What can I do with a bunch of cool fibre-opticy Illumina Sentrix Array Matrixes?

We have a bunch of these SAMs around the lab. They're basically 7" x 4" plastic cartridges with 96 fibre optic bundles stuck in middle. Once they're used they're pretty much worthless to us, though I did make a nice mobile out of a bunch of them once. Could I make some kind of low-def video monitor out of an array of them? Any ideas?

posted by greatgefilte to grab bag (3 comments total)

I assume the little post-like things are the tips of the fibers? Can you get access to the other end of the fiber bundles easily? If you can then you should be able to go nuts making custom illumination systems / displays / etc. It's a little hard to say more without having a better idea of what you can get access to.
posted by pombe at 5:03 PM on February 21, 2008

Oh, sorry, I meant to post more pictures as soon as I had a chance... Yes, I have access to both ends. One end has a ton of microscopic indentations with little tiny DNA-covered beads in them. Would there be any way to somehow project light through the fibres and out on to the wall? How do I start?
posted by greatgefilte at 9:12 PM on February 21, 2008

I would start by holding an LED or other light source up to one end and see how much light comes out the other end. I've had pretty good success jamming and LED up against some plastic fiber optics so I would start with that. If you can get enough light through to look cool, the rest is pretty much engineering on the lighting side of things.
posted by pombe at 10:58 PM on February 21, 2008