Makerspace at KSU Tuscarawas: Microscope Clip

One of our first projects and an important step in showing the importance and usefulness of our Makerspace is our Microscope Clip project. 

This project was the result of a need brought to us by faculty from the biology department. 

The need was for a clip that would allow students to easily attach their cell phones to a microscope and take a picture. While there were some protypes out there, none were exactly what was needed. 

Our first pass was to use a design located on Thingiverse. This design was adjustable, but very clunky and resulted in students spending too much time adjusting and readjusting the phone attachment to fit numerous phones. 

Students and Library staff decided to start from scratch and think about how we could simply this device and allow students to easily slide different size cell phones out so that the each student could easily and quickly capture photos. 

The photo above shows the progression of our microscope clip design. 

The first step was to create a simple cylindar and attach a clip. We did this using Tinkercad and the holes function to allow the clip to attach to the cylindar, yet still have an area for viewing. 

The design was tweaked to ensure that it would be flexible yet not break when used to hold different shapes and widths of various cell phones. 

At that point we released the clip to the biology dept and they found while it could be easily attached to the microscope and all sizes of phone could be held steady, the section that held the phone in place kept students from being able to get a good view of what they were capturing on their cell phone camera. 

In the final phase we modified the design, as shown in the last clip in the photo above, and created a cut out so that when the cell phone was inserted the camera view would show and allow students to see what they were capturing.