Testing procedure for new FED3s

[Lex Kravitz]

Hi all!  I wanted to share a testing procedure that helps when we assemble new FED3s.  We leave the metal nosepiece off, fill the pellets, and put the FED3s into free feeding mode.  This causes FED3 to dispense one pellet every few seconds so we get ~1000 pellets through it in a couple hours. Photo of the setup below, also see video here. 

A nice thing is that the FED3 will display how many pellets are dispensed on the screen during the test, so you can detect if a device is having trouble dispensing the proper number of pellets and needs an adjustment to the motor or disk, etc.  We have started doing this test before putting any new FED3 we build with mice.  Once we're satisfied with this test we glue the nosepiece on and use it with mice!