How adjustable tip spacing pipettes have streamlined our cell culture workflows (video)
How adjustable tip spacing pipettes have streamlined our cell culture workflows
I study Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease in this department. What I have found over the years as money has become tighter, that I need to really make each person as productive as possible. So I've invested heavily in labor saving devices. I chose a VOYAGER, because it was the only pattern that could change the spacing, with the push of a button. And the competitive products required two hands turning a dial.
The VOYAGER is just a lab tool, but it is a very good lab tool, because it frees the PhDs to be able to do things that are more interesting than pipetting. We do enzyme assays, we do Eliza's we do dot blots. There are probably most of the screens out there are formatted for 96 wells. But people do cell culture in all kinds of formats and you can program the VOYAGER to do any kind of cell plate format. Even if you had a 12-volt plate, you could do that setting. Occasionally we use the VOYAGER for multiple dispensing, but really what we find it most helpful for, is transitioning between plate formats.
And the best thing about this VOYAGER is, that it's very easy to use. And we can put on the tips, we can change the space and according to our needs for example for 48 well it's 96 pulpits. Accordingly we can just press on the button. So this is just much faster and can be done one-handed, which was important to us. We're using the nine millimeter and the 13 millimeter spacing, because that's the one convenient for us. It could be anything it's completely programmable. You just simply push the button then you get it done.
The most important thing is, it's very precise and accurate, because what I'm doing my cell viability is say even 5 10 microliters would affect a lot of absorbance. It will affect the results and I am very happy with this, because it's very precise. It's also very easy to adjust. There's a little dial on the front that you can adjust the volume, that you need to pipette very quickly and so that's nice. Then you can also store the settings, that enables you, if you're doing the same thing next time to just go back to that particular application and just punch that in. Plus it's hard to remember where you are. When you're going into ninety-six Wells, it's very easy to go into the wrong well. So it does save a human error in that sense.
If you're doing lots of pipetting in your lab, I think I definitely recommend the VOAYGER in your lab, because if it's very easy and friendly to use and it's a very precise and accurate and it saves lots of your time and effort. I have been fortunate not to need much support from INTEGRA over the years, because these pipetters are incredibly robust. These things just last forever and when I order tips, they come rapidly and they're competitively priced. We have found them VOYAGER's very easy to handle and very robust. It basically never breaks.