Agent skill · k-dense-ai
lab-hardware-cad
Design custom laboratory hardware as parametric build123d models and export fabrication-ready STEP, STL, and DXF files - microfluidic chips and molds, optomechanical mounts and breadboard adapters, cuvette and microplate holders, tube racks, animal-behavior rigs, and 3D-printed instrument fixtures. Use when a research task needs a physical part that must mate with standardized labware, an optical table, a cage system, or a printer, CNC, or laser process.
What it needs
About 12k tokens when loaded.
What this skill does
Lab Hardware CAD Design physical research hardware as parametric Python source, export STEP as the authoritative artifact, and verify the result both numerically and visually before anything is fabricated. The hard part of lab hardware is almost never the geometry. It is that the part must mate with equipment whose dimensions are fixed by a published standard or a vendor drawing. A holder that is 0.5 mm too wide does not fit the plate reader; a channel with the wrong aspect ratio collapses during bonding; a mount whose bolt pattern is 25.4 mm instead of 25.0 mm will not reach the optical table. This skill exists to keep those numbers correct and checked. When to use Use for any request to design, model, or fabricate a physical part for a lab: chip, mold, mount, adapter, holder, rack, bracket, enclosure, jig, fixture, arena, or maze. Also use to inspect or modify an existing STEP file. Do not use for finite-element analysis, computational fluid dynamics, molecular structure, or scientific plotting. Those are different skills. Setup build123d 0.11.1 requires Python >=3.10,<3.15 and pulls in the OpenCascade kernel through cadquery-ocp-novtk. The wheel is large; install once per project and reuse it. All bundled scripts take --help. check.py standards runs without build123d installed. Model files are executed, not parsed. gen.py, check.py, and snapshot.py import a model.py and call its build(), which runs arbitrary Python in the current environment. That is inherent to parametric CAD — the source is the design. Only run model files authored in this session or supplied by the user from a trusted location. If a model came from the internet, a shared drive, or an untrusted colleague, read it before running it and say that you did. Required workflow Follow these steps in order. Steps 5 and 6 are not optional, and step 6 is not waived by step 5 passing. 1. Route to a device family Read the request, classify it, and load exactly one family reference. …
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills k-dense-ai/lab-hardware-cad