LMB / Science / Facilities / Mechanical Workshop
Adam Fowle

Contact

Facilities

Mechanical Workshop

The Mechanical Workshop is a core service at the LMB. It offers a vast array of services to all staff, from repairing and modifying existing equipment to designing and creating innovative pieces of scientific apparatus that enable LMB scientists to experiment in new and challenging ways.

Project examples include designing and constructing a device with Chris Russo to modify the surface of graphene, which improved the reliability of specimen preparation and enhanced image quality in cryo-EM through a controlled and reproducible process. The Workshop has also recently designed and constructed a device to enable a light microscope to simultaneously image a sample in eight colours, allowing scientists both at the LMB and elsewhere to study the interactions between multiple components within cells or tissues.

Colorful light beams from multiple optical components bounce off prisms and mirrors in an intricate microscope setup.
Multispectral imaging hardware for visualising cellular behaviour on the microscale (Kumar et al., Nature Photonics, 2025).

The facility uses SolidWorks and Fusion 360 software to invent and model components to agree on the design with the client. These can then be created using traditional equipment plus modern CNC machinery including lathes, milling machines and an electrical discharge machining machine in a wide variety of metals and polymers. The Workshop has 3D printers to print low-tolerance parts and models of proteins and molecules that would be difficult to make on other machines.

The Workshop continually develops its skills, equipment and methods to keep the LMB ahead in the fast-paced world of scientific advancement, while remaining as cost effective as possible.

Selected Publications

Multispectral live-cell imaging with uncompromised spatiotemporal resolutionKumar A, McNally KE, Zhang Y, Haslett-Saunders A, Wang X, Guillem-Marti J, Lee D, Huang B, Stallinga S, Kay RR, Baker D, Derivery E, Manton JDNature Photonics 19(10): 1146-1156 (2025)
Structure determination by cryoEM at 100 keVMcMullan G, Naydenova K, Mihaylov D, Yamashita K, Peet MJ, Wilson H, Dickerson JL, Chen S, Cannone G, Lee Y, Hutchings KA, Gittins O, Sobhy MA, Wells T, El-Gomati MM, Dalby J, Meffert M, Schulze-Briese C, Henderson R, Russo CJProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 120(49): (2023)
On the reduction in the effects of radiation damage to two-dimensional crystals of organic and biological molecules at liquid-helium temperature.Naydenova K, Kamegawa A, Peet MJ, Henderson R, Fujiyoshi Y, Russo CJUltramicroscopy 237: 113512 (2022)
Real-time multi-angle projection imaging of biological dynamics.Chang BJ, Manton JD, Sapoznik E, Pohlkamp T, Terrones TS, Welf ES, Murali VS, Roudot P, Hake K, Whitehead L, York AG, Dean KM, Fiolka RNat Methods 18(7): 829-834 (2021)