Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are lots of different types of fittings. For glass chips where you etch the glass and bond another layer of glass over to seal you often have surface mount ports that you clamp on over a small hole and cure in an oven to bond. These give you a threaded port. https://darwin-microfluidics.com/products/nanoport-kit-for-1... It’s not so micro really. The internal flow geometry is around 100um but you’re mostly work…
What about a hybrid approach, as I think folks do right now more or less -- draw it out by eye, and then validate the design with simulation-software (e.g. https://www.comsol.com/microfluidics-module ) and iterate as needed from thereon. Your inclination toward a computational approach makes me think of what folks in mechanical engineering are up to these days. Creating mechanical designs generatively with topologica…
I’m interested in this approach because the current situation (including hybrid) has engineers, often students, designing devices to meet the need of biologists. There a going to be a fundamental challenge here in terms of communication of requirements, expertise and time the engineers have and limitations of available fabrication methods.
This results in the lowest common denominator in terms of design and performance. I want to make tools that the key stakeholders (biologists etc) can use to plot out the functionality they require and obtain a functional geometry. I’ve also got a concept for a rapid prototyping platform that eliminates many of the problems with 3D printing.