Mikeselectricstuff has some teardown videos of DNA sequencers. Interesting stuff.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaumUp4GpCw" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaumUp4GpCw</a>
What about reagents? The sequencers themselves are expensive, but library kits cost a lot of money, as do the reagents for running a flow cell. Even if I can get a sequencer for free, if I still have to pay through the nose for reagents it's no good. Especially as these sequencers become obsolete and people stop MAKING the relevant reagents, and their cost goes higher and higher.
Here's another series of posts where they tear down one of the original Illumina sequencers (the Genome Analyzer).<p><a href="https://blogs.swarthmore.edu/Illumina+GAIIx+Teardown/" rel="nofollow">https://blogs.swarthmore.edu/Illumina+GAIIx+Teardown/</a>