Limits of Vibrating Microtomy

The Vibratome, or vibrating microtome allows sectioning of the mouse brain with a reliably established thickness from 50 µm, but they have a strong limitation on the size of the sample suitable for cutting. Herein is described the construction with publicly available element base (from parts for a 3D printer) a so-called 3D-vibrating microtome capable of cutting larger size brain into thin sections, and use it to investigate the limit-attainable values of the minimum slice thickness. Both of these goals have been successfully achieved. Both small mouse slices with a minimum thickness of 30 μm and large whole calf brain slices with a minimum thickness of 150 μm were obtained. Critical features of the effect of blade vibration frequency and sample feed rate on the minimum slice thickness were revealed, In the same way, a clear correlation was established between the minimum achievable thickness and its area.