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Making the central chamber

A project log for Y-maze to study cognitive abilities in insects

An affordable and easy to make instrument to train and test fruit flies

brainybaboonBrainy.Baboon 02/11/2022 at 18:180 Comments

For ease of use, I conceptualized a unit detachable arms to allow cleaning(because with insects olfactory cues are a major confound) and customization. To this end, I designed the thing in the shape of a trapezoid with glass sides and top and bottom for visibility and adapters for each of the three arms. The adapters were made by drilling holes into plastic caps. The adapters were glued onto the front and back walls of the chamber. This required these two walls to have holes. Now from the pictures you could tell that my glass-working skills are not that great so I did not attempt drilling holes onto glass. Since visibility from this aspect was not a prerequisite, I made these part out of epoxy, a technique that I had learned while working on a previous project. The sides of the chamber were put together using RTV silicone glue since this was the most effective adhesive for glass. The plastic caps(adapters) were glued using cyanoacrylate.

The glass pieces.

The front and back made out of epoxy. The holes were cut out while the epoxy was curing using the plastic caps which were to be attached in them.

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