Low-Cost Centrifuge
Putting a new spin on the centrifuge
The centrifuge is an essential piece of laboratory equipment, but is expensive and often unavailable outside of established laboratory settings.
Inspired by an ancient children’s whirligig toy, we invented a 20-cent paper centrifuge that holds potential for diagnostics of anemia and malaria in resource-poor settings. This hand-powered Paperfuge achieves speeds of 125,000 r.p.m. and equivalent centrifugal forces of 30,000 g.
Building on the Paperfuge, we developed a 3D-printed version based on the same design principles. The 3D-Fuge increases the volume capacity to 2 mL, enabling this hand-powered centrifuge to be used in molecular biology applications.
The Paperfuge, a hand-powered low-cost centrifuge, in action.
This project has been featured On Nature, Sciene, forbes, CNN, and More.
Major questions
1) Can we create a reliable low-cost centrifuge for diagnostics?
2) Can we expand upon the design of the Paperfuge for applications in molecular biology?
3) Can frugal devices create new use-case applications and inspire curiosity?
What we’ve discovered
The Paperfuge achieves speeds of 125,000 r.p.m. and centrifugal forces of 30,000 g.
The paperfuge can separate pure plasma from whole blood in less than 1.5 minutes, and isolate malaria parasites in 15 minutes. This makes it a reliable low-cost tool to use in medical diagnostics in resource-constrained settings.
The 3D-Fuge increases the volume capacity to 2 mL, enabling its use in molecular biology.
This volume capacity increases allows the hand-powered 3D-Fuge to be used for spinning down samples for biomarker applications or performing nucleotide extraction for DNA sequencing. We employ this in high school settings and deep in the Amazon Rainforest.
The paperfuge has sparked a ‘centrifrugal’ revolution
It’s simplicity, play-like design and powerful applications have inspired a broad spectrum of citizen scientists, high school students, and academic researchers to think frugally to design accessible and affordable biomedical devices. For its societal impact, the paperfuge was recognized with the 2018 Beazley Design award (alongside the SpaceX Falcon Heavy).
Read the papers
A 3D-Printed hand-powered centrifuge for molecular biology. PLOS Biology (2019).
Hand-powered ultralow-cost paper centrifuge. Nature Biomedical Engineering (2017).
Download CAD files to build your own 3d-fuge
What others are saying
“The paper-and-string centrifuge is a significant step towards bringing the separation capability of clinical laboratory centrifuges to the point-of-care. Beyond its obvious clinical applications in the developing world, the paper-and-string centrifuge is poised to become an ingenious tool for science education.”