I found this hidden on the Internet Archive earlier this morning. In
this particular study, a group printed out an atomic force microscope
by SLS, a 3D printing method, bought some parts, and made a functional
AFM. Interestingly enough, in the study, they tested the probe/tip
against DNA and found that they could do at least 650 reads of the DNA
and get back basically the same response- in other words, they were
doing single molecular force spectroscopy, which is a really big deal.
They also were kind enough to document where to buy the non-3D-printed
parts.
zip file: http://heybryan.org/books/papers/AFM.zip
dir: http://heybryan.org/books/papers/AFM/
And where it was on the web, all abandoned and alone :-(
http://web.archive.org/web/20080106164837/http://www.biophysik.physik.uni-muenchen.de/PlasticAFM/
I don't really care if it's called a "rapid prototyped" AFM or not. As
long as it gets built easily. Anyway, as for the software issues--
http://gwyddion.net/ "Gwyddion is a modular program for SPM (scanning
probe microscopy) data visualization and analysis. Primarily it is
intended for analysis of height fields obtained by scanning probe
microscopy techniques (AFM, MFM, STM, SNOM/NSOM), however it can be
generally used for any other height field and image analysis, for
instance for analysis of profilometry data (learn more about Gwyddion
features)."
http://gxsm.sourceforge.net/ "The GXSM is the Gnome X Scanning
Microscopy project, it is a bit more than just a piece of software
(the GXSM itself), there is full hardware support for DSP cards
including open source DSP software and a growing set of SPM related
electronics. And it is not limited to SPM at all, it provides generic
multidimensional image and data movie processing."
Screenshots:
http://gxsm.sourceforge.net/gxsm2-DarwinMaxOSX-screenshot.jpg
http://gwyddion.net/screenshots/gwyddion-screenshot-8.png
For a piezo controller, follow the example of the $100 STM project.
How to make a disk scanner
http://www.geocities.com/spm_stm/disk_scanner.html
and the other electronics: http://www.geocities.com/spm_stm/Project.html
- Bryan