Spotlight on customer creativity! 🔬 A customer bought our @openflexure.bsky.social kit, printed his own parts & sent this great photo. Love the colour choice! We print in Black, Blue, & Green using recycled Filamentive PLA. We want to add a new colour - what should it be? Let us know! #3DPrinting

Read about how @openflexure.bsky.social has helped us develop new live-cell imaging capabilities in financially constrained settings openflexure.org/live_cell_im... Thanks @wellcometrust.bsky.social + BBSRC for supporting research in this area @globalbioimaging.bsky.social @bioimaginguk.bsky.social

📖Published📖 In this recent practical tools article, authors introduce Mothbox, an automated light trap designed for scalable insect monitoring, and Mothbot, a platform for automated light trap data processing and validation 🦋 🌍 🧪 Read more here 👇 buff.ly/eb7tBk0

The rad folks over at FreeCAD Project Association are running a contest! This one is focused on Open Science and partnering with LabCrafter with ca$h prizes and the knowledge that you're helping advance the world of openness. Check out the call right here: blog.freecad.org/2026/05/01/f...

Parts starts coming in, PCBs ordered, the 3D printer up and running: It’s mothbox replication time!!! @dinalab.bsky.social

Hey look we got a cool new paper out in @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social all about the MOTHBOX! Hubert put together a really nice paper with our team including Bernat Fortet, Daisy H. Dent, @wellreadpanda.bsky.social and @briannaljohns.bsky.social besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

📌 Οur friends at @freecad.org are launching the first-ever community design contest, in partnership with @labcrafter.co.uk. The 2026 Contest focuses on #OpenScience hardware, inviting participants to design an open hardware pinch valve. Find out more at: blog.freecad.org/2026/05/01/f...

I need to try FreeCAD sometime 👀 Maybe this is the excuse I need (to procrastinate from everything else...)

Big news! 🔬 The OpenFlexure Project just won the GW4 Alliance Open Research Prize! 🏆 We’re honoured to be recognised for our commitment to making microscopy transparent, reproducible, and accessible to all. Open Research is at the heart of everything we do. Read more: gw4.ac.uk/orw/

What did you do during the Easter break? Gerrit has been working on building a @mothbox.bsky.social ! 🛠️🌍 We’ve been looking for a project that resonates with our passion for #CitizenScience, and we think the Mothbox is it. If all goes well, we'll be adding these to our store lineup.

Post on the OpenScienceShop blog about using the OpenFlexure microscope in educational settings. #OpenScience #OpenHardware #OScH www.openscienceshop.org/the-openflex...

Last year @wildlabs.bsky.social and ARM gave us another amazing prize to make a new, mass-manufacturable version of the Mothbox! We spent this time learning how to design industrial PCBs with @kicad.org , and now have a wonderful version we are distributing around the world! Check out its specs!

📜 Project Showcase 🛠️ OpenFlexure microscopes: a 3D printed flexure translation stage. 👨‍🔬Joe Knapper 👀 To learn more about OpenFlexure: open-neuroscience.com/en/post/open... #OpenScience #OpenNeuroscience #OpenHardware #OpenSource

A new LabCrafter newsletter just appeared! labcrafter.co.uk/blogs/news/n...

As per our previous post, here is the link to the Raspberry Pi article featuring LabCrafter and the Pioreactor! 🧪 Full kits are ready to ship, and the latest XR upgrade kits are arriving shortly! 🛠️ www.raspberrypi.com/news/pioreac...

Back from FOSDEM, where Gerrit joined the @openflexure.bsky.social team at their stand! It was a brilliant opportunity to connect with the open-source hardware community. The perfect homecoming awaited us: the latest Raspberry Pi magazine featuring Pioreactor and Gerrit's work on the AMYBO project!

Heading to FOSDEM in Brussels at the end of the month? So are we! 🇧🇪 Gerrit is joining the OpenFlexure Microscope stand at FOSDEM, and he isn’t coming empty-handed. He’ll have a limited supply of LabCrafter OFM kits available for purchase on the spot! First come, first served. #FOSDEM #OpenFlexure

Our revamped OpenFlexure website is live! 🎉 openflexure.org Big thanks to PenDigital Ltd for the redesign 🙌 Check out our new pages about our community, funding, and how the microscope is built and used. #OpemFlexure #OpenSource #website

Mothbox updates: I figured out some hacks that make starting up and configuring a mothbox WAYYYY easier! Also spent the whole end of the year and beginning of the year whittling away at little refinements to the manufacturing process! forum.openhardware.science/t/new-firmwa...

The electronics of the new Mothbox are so wonderfully easy to put together!

The Open Science Shop is working to develop a distributed manufacturing network of open science hardware. I am excited to share that the Open Science Shop has now documented the steps you can take to become an open science hardware vendor. Check it out here: www.openscienceshop.org/new_vendors/

Our meeting with the Open Science Shop's group of manufacturers went even better when @wellreadpanda.bsky.social shows up with sloth friends.

What better way to start the week than with LabCrafter's one-year anniversary! 🥳 We want to extend a huge thank you to our customers. It's been a joy sharing our love for open-source scientific equipment with all of you. For now, it's time for a well-deserved cake break! 🎂🥂

Here's a super cool documentary about the Mothbox! Learn about the development and use of this fun #openscience #opensource tool for DIY biodiversity monitoring! youtu.be/1LGz3aWpeVE?...

Crimping a connector for a fluorescence add-on we're collaborating on for the OpenFlexure microscope.

Happy Gosh Gathering from Dinacon!! 10 years ago @goshcommunity.bsky.social made a goal to make open science hardware ubiquitous by 2025! The time has arrived and we are celebrating #opentools here with 53 people at Dinacon! #openscience #opensource

Being self-employed means we can do more of what we love. Recently we volunteered at our local children's nursery and brought the OpenFlexure Microscope. We had a great time hunting for garden creatures and viewing pre-prepared slides. The hairy fly legs were definitely the biggest hit!🪰

Gerrit wrote a blog post about his experience at the 2025 Open Hardware Summit in Edinburgh, organised by @oshwassociation.bsky.social . gerritniezen.com/reviving-the... #oshw #openscience #OHS2025

Gerrit gave a talk last week at the Open Hardware Summit in Edinburgh about our collaboration with the AMYBO community to grow food with electricity! Thanks to @oshwassociation.bsky.social for organising this amazing summit and hosting it in the UK. www.youtube.com/watch?v=RI_2...

Oooh we are getting sooo antsy to see you all at the Summit in just FIVE days! We've even got a handful of tickets left if you want to join us: ohs2025.eventbrite.com

Beautiful micrographs from the OpenFlexure microscope, showing off its ability to create huge stitched images: images.openflexure.org/viewer/

A school in the Netherlands used our 5V boost converters (labcrafter.co.uk/products/5v-...) for their sensor boxes, and gave a presentation on their inspiring project at The Things Network Conference: www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3B2...

We wrote a post for the Open Science Shop newsletter, a network of open science hardware vendors that we're part of: www.openscienceshop.org/labcrafter/

I’d never heard of the Pioreactor before! For anyone else curious: Pioreactor: pioreactor.com Electropioreactor: amybo.org/docs/electro...

We're working with the AMYBO.org community to extend the Pioreactor for sustainable protein experiments. 🦠 A couple of weeks ago, we ran a hands-on session at the Cambridge Festival Schools Days! 🧪🌱 KS3 students used the Pioreactor and @openflexure.bsky.social microscope to explore cyanobacteria.

OpenFlexure microscope and high-resolution upgrade kit now back in stock! labcrafter.co.uk/collections/...

On day 1 of #OHS2025 you can catch Gerrit Niezen of @labcrafter.co.uk talk about harnessing hydrogen-oxidizing bacteria, creating an open-source bioreactor for small-scale protein production, making microbial protein fermentation accessible! Get your ticket today: 2025.oshwa.org/attend/

Tickets are ON SALE NOW for the Open Hardware Summit 2025 in Edinburgh, Scotland! Get your ticket today right here: ohs2025.eventbrite.com

Very excited to be giving a talk at the upcoming Open Hardware Summit in Edinburgh on May 30th: https://2025.oshwa.org/talks/070-gerrit-niezen/

Whooo ill be there talking about Moths and Robots and robots to look at moths!

New Product Alert! 🚨 Our in-house designed 5V Boost Converter is now in stock! Perfect for battery-powered environmental monitoring, it delivers 5V while fully disconnecting when disabled. Learn more: https://labcrafter.co.uk/products/5v-boost-converter-with-true-shutdown #OpenHardware

Busy preparing a new product for launch!

We are having a blast at #FOSDEM, showcasing the OpenFlexure Microscopes and chatting with loads of other open-source enthusiasts!! Come and see us in Hall H to get a demo of our microscope, and come along to our talk tomorrow at 15:20 CET in H.1309 (Van Rijn)! #OpenSource

Our OpenFlexure Microscope kits proved very popular, and now you can be notified when we're back in stock. We wrote our own code for this to eliminate use of third party Shopify Apps that share customer details.

Since Prusa decided to move away from open-source, it made it much easier to decide which 3D printer to buy next. Voron Design is similar to the OpenFlexure Project, in that a core team creates the design, and a network of vendors sell kits to build it. Looking forward to building this Voron 2.4!

OpenFlexure Microscopes are more available than ever. It is really exciting to see so many businesses helping our community buy microscopes. @labcrafter.co.uk have a new Hi-Res upgrade kit. Fieldworkers in Japan are also selling a kit! The true power of Open Hardware is that anyone can sell it.

Sending out our first newsletter! Subscribe on our website if you'd like to read the next one: labcrafter.co.uk

Merry Christmas from the OpenFlexure Project. Did Santa get anyone a microscope? 🔬🎅🎁

New stock from @[email protected] just arrived and is available in our store right now: https://labcrafter.co.uk/collections/pioreactor