From the paper in Nature Biomedical Engineering:
In a global-health context, commercial centrifuges are expensive, bulky and electricity-powered, and thus constitute a critical bottleneck in the development of decentralized, battery-free point-of-care diagnostic devices. Here, we report an ultralow-cost (20 cents), lightweight (2 g), human-powered paper centrifuge (which we name 'paperfuge') designed on the basis of a theoretical model inspired by the fundamental mechanics of an ancient whirligig (or buzzer toy; 3,300 BC). The paperfuge achieves speeds of 125,000 r.p.m. (and equivalent centrifugal forces of 30,000 g), with theoretical limits predicting 1,000,000 r.p.m. We demonstrate that the paperfuge can separate pure plasma from whole blood in less than 1.5 min, and isolate malaria parasites in 15 min. We also show that paperfuge-like centrifugal microfluidic devices can be made of polydimethylsiloxane, plastic and 3D-printed polymeric materials. Ultracheap, power-free centrifuges should open up opportunities for point-of-care diagnostics in resource-poor settings and for applications in science education and field ecology.
The lead inventor, Manu Prakash, is the recipient of a MacArthur "genius grant", and deservedly so. He also has an elegant portal web page on the Stanford site.
(Score: 3, Informative) by gringer on Friday January 13 2017, @05:44PM
My own accidental experiments involving small children (more correctly, the children's experiments) suggest that the plastic microfuge tubes break (and shatter) before the PLA does. That's probably because the tubes have lots of sticky-out bits, and the PLA disc doesn't.
Knowing how easy it is to delaminate PLA, I expect that a fan adapter that I could print for this model would result in a similarly bad outcome if brought into contact with something else at high speed.
Ask me about Sequencing DNA in front of Linus Torvalds [youtube.com]