Question: What was the first thing you 3d printed? And why did you decide to print that design?

Sarah Hampson answered on 7 Nov 2016:

It was a design for a particle & cell-analysing microchip. It does analysis by using light. We started with light first because it was simpler than other ways you could do it (electricity, lasers, sound waves…), as well as being cheaper (laser equipment is very expensive!)

Since then I’ve printed a 2nd design that uses electricity instead of light. This lets you make a much smaller microchip, but it’s harder to get it to work