Create your quote

Pricing update (20-03-2024): After maintaining our pricing  throughout the past 2-3 years’ inflation, effectively absorbing the extra costs into our bottom line, we now need to pass on some of those costs to our customers. This will apply only to machined metal parts. Assembled R2Drives will be 5 euros more expensive, while bases will also be +5 per unit.

In collaboration with the Buzsáki lab, we are producing their new microdrive system centered around a Recoverable and Reusable metal microdrive (R2Drive). After two successful production batches for tens of labs in Europe, Asia and the US, we are now happy to add the R2 microdrive system to our regular product line.

The R2Drive is a micromachined metal microdrive for silicon probe implantation. With a weight of less than 0.5g, it is light enough to be used on all rodent models. The drive is designed with a small footprint to find the sweet spot where it requires little space, but is still large enough to be handled comfortably. To illustrate this, we have heard of labs using multiple R2Drives in mice, and others that succeeded in recovering drives and attached Neuropixel probes multiple times by hand.

The main body of the R2Drive is connected to a base, which is fixed to the skull during implantation. By removing a small screw, the drive can be disconnected from the base, allowing easy recovery of both drive and attached silicon probes for multiple reuses!

The arm is designed to make it compatible to a broad range of silicon probes. Most (smaller) probes will fit on the regular version of the drive. The Neuropixels version comprises a larger arm, which is compatible to Neuropixels 1.0 probes (with and without cap) as well as other, larger, probes.

To build a complete implant, additional parts are needed, especially a protective cap. We have created an overview of different types of head  gear, including the caps described in the eLife paper. If you prefer the DIY approach, you can find instructions on how to make the head-gear (and microdrives) on the Buzsaki lab github page. For additional resources on the R2Drive, check here.

Drive parameters
Material
aluminium (main parts), stainless steel and brass (screws)
Footprint (mm)
3.3mm x 4.45mm (w x d, bottom) 4mm x 5mm (w x d, including arm)
Weight
0.47g
Travel distance
7 mm
Travel per turn
1/90 inch (282µm)
Arm size
regular: 3.6mm (w) x 8.35mm (h)
Neuropixels: 5mm (w) x 10mm (h)

For safe implantation and recovery of the drives, we also offer a set of stereotax attachments & drive holders and fitting screwdrivers. An additional set of R2Drive bases allows you to get your drives and probes ready for re-implantation in no time!

To build a complete implant, additional parts are needed, especially a protective cap. We have created an overview of different types of head gear, including the caps described in the eLife paper. If you prefer the DIY approach, you can find instructions on how to make the head-gear (and microdrives) on the Buzsaki lab github page.

Regular vs Neuropixels R2Drive​

The R2Drive comes in two flavors, a regular and a Neuropixels version. The drive base and bodies are identical in both versions, only the dimensions of the arm differ. You can find a video of a Neuropixels probe being loaded into a Neuropixels R2Drive (courtesy of Mihály Vöröslakos)  on Youtube.

A second difference between the two arms is the relative position of the arm in the drive. While the regular arm reaches to the bottom of the base (left picture, distance to bottom ~0.3mm), the Neuropixels arm does not (right picture, distance to bottom of base ~1.5mm). The former is therefore better suited for applications in which probes with shorter shanks are used or where reaching the maximally possible depth is crucial, while the Neuropixels arm can be better suited for longer shanks.

Arm dimensions

Neuropixels (5×10), regular (3.6×8.35)