OpenMFDA Foundry · v0.3
We design tiny plastic chips that move small amounts of liquid through channels thinner than a hair. Browse the designs, make your own in your browser, and print them.
Every chip and component in the library is designed for a specific printer: BYU's H.R.3.3 or the Phrozen Sonic Mighty 12K. The pumps printed so far, and how they turned out, are recorded on Hardware and process. Everything here is free to use. Built at the State of Utah Center of Excellence for Biomedical Microfluidics, University of Utah — mems.utah.edu/research/mfda. In collaboration with Pierre-Emmanuel Gaillardon’s lab at the University of Utah and Gregory Nordin’s group at BYU.
The design shown here is the Nordin Group's, BYU, and its images on this page are not under this site's MIT licence; for their terms, ask the Nordin Group.
A catalogue of chip designs you can look through and download. Each one says what it is for, where it came from, and the printer it is drawn for. Every chip and component in the library is designed for a specific printer: BYU's H.R.3.3 or the Phrozen Sonic Mighty 12K.
Browse the library →Three makers, each building one kind of part right in your browser: a straight channel, a chamber chip and a droplet generator. Each one gives you a file you can 3D print, with its OpenSCAD source and a record of every setting, and none of them sends anything anywhere.
Open the makers →What our chips are printed on, and what with: the printers, the resin, the print settings and the post-processing. Every number says where it came from, so you can tell what we measured ourselves, what we took from someone else's published work, and what we simply do not know.
Read about printers and process →Three steps take you from a description of what you want the chip to do, to a file you can send to a 3D printer.
Say what liquids go in, how much of each, and what should happen to them. You do not need to draw anything.
Our design software works out where every channel and chamber goes, and produces a file you can 3D print.
Yosys, OpenROAD, and OpenSCAD synthesize, place, route, and emit a printable STL.
Yosys → OpenROAD → OpenSCAD
Download the STL and SCAD. What happens after that — printing, mounting, actuation — is up to you; the Foundry publishes the geometry, not a fabrication route.
What is known about the printers, resin and process is recorded on Hardware and process.
The design software that does these steps is open source, at github.com/utah-MFDA/openmfda_flow. On this site you can browse the library and use the makers.
A curated slice of the catalog — two reference chips, a pearl-chain mixer and a reaction chamber drawn for the Phrozen Sonic Mighty 12K, and three components, each with its files to download. The full library has 41 entries — 12 component products covering 74 generated variants, plus the chips, reference chips and the benchmark suite.
A monolithic resin-SLA design of a pearl-chain mixer, drawn from measurements of the Fluidic 658 technical datasheet.
View details → Reference chip · ChamberA single monolithic resin-SLA block with one 20 µL, 350 µm-deep stadium reaction chamber, two straight 0.5 mm feed channels on the same floor, and two Ø1.5 mm vertical access bores to the top surface.
View details → Component · PumpsA pump whose only moving parts are thin flexible sheets.
View details → Component · ValvesThe same round chamber and flexible sheet as the branching valve, with one outlet channel.
View details → Component · Serpentine channelsA single channel that runs back and forth so that a long path fits inside a small square.
View details →Scientific Reports (2025)
Goenner, B., Temple, S., Zapata, S., Wakeham, D., Snelgrove, A.,
Gaillardon, P.-E., Nordin, G. P., & Gale, B. K. (2025).
An open source platform to automate the design, verification, and
manufacture of 3D printed microfluidic devices.
Scientific Reports, 15, 33077.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-15976-9DATE (2025)
Snelgrove, A., Wakeham, D., Stockham, S., Temple, S. R., & Gaillardon, P.-E. (2025).
OpenMFDA: Microfluidic Design Automation in Three Dimensions.
Design, Automation & Test in Europe Conference (DATE 2025).