  A well-rounded introduction to work in a STEM laboratory is vital to
scientific education. Besides the ability to use available instrumentation for
sample characterization, students should also be imparted knowledge in the
steps of instrument development and construction. These concepts can be taught
using the example of lipid vesicle preparation via extrusion. Vesicle extrusion
is a common technique that involves syringes pushing solutions through membrane
filters and is used in fundamental studies on vesicles. Such research is
important to better understand of biological phenomena and drug development.
Well prepared samples are key to successful research. While the manual approach
is very useful to acquire experience, automatic extrusion is more convenient,
and automation often results in better reproducibility. These advantages can be
combined in a simplistic automatic extruder, that does not require advanced
technical skills to be assembled. It can therefore be used by various groups,
ranging undergraduate to graduate students using equipment typically available.
Using this approach, students can acquire different skillsets including coding,
testing, and advanced use of building materials based on their properties.
Finally, the quality of the automatic extruder is verified.
