At it's most basic level electrospinning is not all that complicated. But the devils in the details. The basic idea is we set up a chamber with a nozzle at the top that emits a controlled amount of material. An electrical field of up to 30kV is established between that nozzle and a ground plate. The material being extruded is pulled and stretched by the electrical field, eventually breaking loose and flying toward the ground plate. During it's flight the solvent evaporates, leaving a mat of the material on the grounding plate. Under the right conditions, the length of the fibers that are deposited can range down into the nano scale in length. We want a machine that can produce fibers in that range.

All good so far, right?

Now comes the details. The distance between the nozzle and the grounding plate will vary between different materials, indeed, between different ratios of the same material and the solvent used. The extrusion rate needs to be adjustable, as it will vary for the same reasons the distance between the nozzle and the grounding plate does.

Since I want this to be accurate, I want to design this so once you get the right settings for a particular material you can load those settings again and have a more than fair chance of repeating your previous success.

The conditions I want to control is extrusion rate, voltage, temperature, nozzle to plate distance, and possibly humidity. All in an accurate and repeatable manner. There are other 'nice to have' features, also. Those would include an air supply, fume extraction, a camera to see close up if a Taylor cone is forming without having to get your face all up in the chamber, and several methods I have in mind to help control the landing spot of the wildly whipping fibers flying through the chamber.

Easy, right? No problem!

I also need to make it affordable to a hobbyist, no less. Again, no problem. Ebay is our friend for these kinds of things!

The one piece that, in my opinion, needs to be the most accurate is the syringe pump. So I'm starting there. With all the variables involved it's obvious I'm going to need a controller of some type, especially if I want it to be repeatable. The obvious choice is an Arduino board of some flavor or another. They are widely available and cheap. Keeping in mind that motor control is a part of it, either a shield or onboard motor control will be needed. While I'm leaning towards just using a Rambo board, I haven't really finalized that yet. It does have some advantages, most notably the stepper motor control, inputs for thermistors and outputs for heaters and fans. I'm really not looking to build something like that when it's already available to purchase now.

Anyway, I better get back to work. I should have an update soon on how the syringe pump is coming along. I have parts printing for it as I type... :)