Objective. Twisted wire probes (TWPs, e.g. stereotrodes and tetrodes) provide a cheap and reliable method for obtaining high quality, multiple single-unit neural recordings in freely moving animals. Despite their ubiquity, TWPs are constructed using a tedious procedure consisting of manually folding, turning, and fusing microwire. This imposes a significant labor burden on research personnel who use TWPs in their experiments. Approach. To address this issue, we created Twister3, an open-source microwire twisting machine. This machine features a quick-draw wire feeder that eliminates manual wire folding, an auto-aligning motor attachment mechanism which results in consistently straight probes, and a high speed motor for rapid probe turning. Main results. Twister3 greatly increases the speed and repeatability of constructing twisted microwire probes compared to existing options. Users with less than one hour of experience using the device were able to make ~70 tetrodes per hour, on average. It is cheap, well documented, and all associated designs and source code are open-source. Significance. Twister3 significantly reduces the labor burden of creating high-quality TWPs so electrophysiologists can spend more of their time performing recordings rather than making probes. Therefore, this device is of interest to any lab performing TWP neural recordings, for example, using microdrives.

客观的。双绞线探针（TWP，例如立体电极和四电极）提供了一种廉价且可靠的方法，用于在自由移动的动物中获得高质量的多个单单元神经记录。尽管它们无处不在，但 TWP 是使用繁琐的程序构建的，包括手动折叠、转动和融合微丝。这给在实验中使用 TWP 的研究人员带来了巨大的劳动负担。方法。为了解决这个问题，我们创建了 Twister3，这是一种开源的微线捻线机。该机器具有快速拉丝送丝器，无需手动折叠线材，自动对准电机连接机构可实现始终笔直的探针，以及用于快速旋转探针的高速电机。 主要结果。与现有选项相比，Twister3 大大提高了构建双绞微线探头的速度和可重复性。使用该设备的经验不足一小时的用户平均每小时能够制作约 70 个四极管。它很便宜，有据可查，所有相关的设计和源代码都是开源的。意义。Twister3 显着降低了创建高质量 TWP 的劳动负担，因此电生理学家可以将更多时间用于记录而不是制作探针。因此，任何执行 TWP 神经记录的实验室都对该设备感兴趣，例如，使用微驱动器。