- Counter Culture Labs in Oakland is being scoped as the first physical site for an open-source DNA microarray gene-synthesis machine, with a Tuesday 7 pm “beer-and-pizza” social planned to recruit local biohackers and gauge community interest.  
- A high-throughput oligo-synthesis concept was sketched: a 1.2 MHz nozzle array could deliver ~240 k bases/s, requiring a 609 m, 1200-dpi conveyor belt to finish a 2-minute run—an early feasibility estimate that framed the scale challenge.  
- Participants compared open-source FPGA toolchains (Ice40 Verilog flow) against commercial Mesa cards (VHDL) for controlling the microarray hardware, arguing that open tools could cut costs and broaden global access to the technology.  
- A laser-cut microarray workflow was proposed: synthesize oligos on a grid, then use laser-etched microchannels to merge droplets in successive Gibson-assembly stages, eliminating robotic pick-and-place while enabling hierarchical gene assembly.  
- Practical synthesis limits were noted: routine electroporation handles ≤40 kB plasmids, 200 kB is possible but unstable; surface-tension-driven droplet merging and “wall-less wells” (hydrophobic patterning) were discussed as ways to handle nanoliter reagents without microfluidic valves.  
- Safety and sourcing concerns were raised about Azco’s sparse MSDS for phosphoramidites and the absence of a fume hood at CCL, highlighting the need for better chemical documentation and lab infrastructure.  
- Scaling strategies debated included barcode-based PCR enrichment versus hybridization/Gibson assembly, photocleavable linkers with laser/DMD release, and yeast homologous recombination as an in-vivo error-correction layer for large oligo pools.  
- Links and references shared: Church lab 2014 review on large-scale DNA synthesis, PLOS ONE paper on cycled-ligation assembly, Amyris white-paper on ligase cycling reaction, and an open Google Sheet with reagent shopping lists and process steps.