These .ai files contain schematics for laser cutting acrylic to produce the behavioral chambers used in Thornquist and Crickmore 2017. The intent of these designs is to be cheap, customizable, and easily reproducible. There are two files in each folder:
Behavioral chamber: This contains several layers, each of which are cut out of sheets of acrylic, stacked, and bound together by pressure from screws placed at each of the four corners tightened with knurled nuts.
Boxes: These are simple boxes which use a jigsaw-like pattern to make it easy to fit the pieces together. They can be head together with tape or sealed together using acrylic cement. These create 1) a case on top of the behavioral arena to shield it from light and to set the camera on top of and 2) a case surrounding the LEDs which are used to manipulate the activity of neurons. I use 1/8" thick black acrylic for the camera box and 1/8" thick semi-opaque grey acrylic for the lower box.
In addition, a Raspberry Pi with the NoIR camera is placed on top of the camera box, and this is blocked using a longpass filter so that only IR illumination from adjacent IR LED arrays is used to visualize the flies (so that the camera isn't flooded with red or green light during the optogenetic stimulation).
The top two layers (doors and top layer) use 1/16" clear colorless acrylic.
The "holes for arenas" layer uses 1/8" thick black acrylic.
The "clear acrylic" layer uses 1/16" clear colorless acrylic.
There is an additional copy of the "clear acrylic" layer which is cut from diffuser film and placed in between the clear acrylic layer and the "holes for lights" layer to help uniformly distribute the LED illumination.
The "holes for lights" layer uses 1/4" clear or colored acrylic. This contains wider holes into which I fit plastic tubes that insulate each well from lights from the others. The tubes I use are only semi-opaque (from McMaster-Carr) so that the IR illumination can still pass through.
This one is a little bit special because it also involves piping water underneath the wells. The diffuser film layer actually serves as the floor between water bath (for which I also use 1/8" or 1/16" thick black acrylic) and the holes for the behavioral arena. This is sealed to the top of the water bath layer using liquid gasket.
The holes in the water bath layer through which water is piped are tapped and threaded adapters are screwed into these spaces (with a dab of superglue or epoxy to ensure a tight and lasting seal). I use semi-clear white McMaster-Carr part 5463K53.