Need advice for buying a new laboratory balance? Maybe you just need to service your balance? This Lab Manager article provides a number of handy tips for identifying these needs.

Consider these warning signs in servicing and replacing your laboratory centrifuge. This article also features the top 5 questions you should ask when buying a new lab centrifuge, and a list of centrifuge companies.

Instrument noise, particularly from cooling devices, can take its toll on laboratory workers. Noise interferes with conversations but can also induce stress, leading to irritability, anxiety, and poor performance. Lab workers are particularly susceptible, as decibels in busy labs can add up quickly from refrigerators, freezers, aspirators, fume hoods, and chillers. Noise is therefore an important factor when choosing a chiller.

Filtration makes up a key procedure in a wide range of laboratories, from basic biological and chemical research to industrial applications, including food processing, pharmaceuticals, and more. Many biologists, for example, filter smaller and smaller volumes of sample.

Flow cytometry is a powerful technology that allows researchers and clinicians to perform complex cellular analysis quickly and efficiently by analyzing several parameters simultaneously.

This category also includes questions you should ask when buying a freeze dryer

Top 6 Signs That You Should Service or Replace Your Fume Hood

Top 5 Signs That You Should Service or Replace Your Gas Generator

The new Parker Balston H2PEMPD Hydrogen Generator will replace dangerous, expensive cylinders of hydrogen fuel gases and helium carrier gases in the laboratory, allowing users to supply, control, and automate all hydrogen gas supplies.

Taking some time to investigate the lab’s operations to uncover inefficiencies is a key part of successful lab design. It’s important to note any complaints regarding lab ergonomics: benches that are too high or crowded, not enough space for computer-related work, workflows scattered around the lab instead of being concentrated.

Top 5 Signs That You Should Service or Replace Your Gel Imager/Gel Documentation System

Top 6 Signs That You Should Service or Replace Your CO2 Incubator

Chromatography data systems (CDSs)— the data “back end” for gas, liquid, ion, and supercritical fluid analytic chromatography—have evolved over the decades from simple chart recorders to onboard processors with minimal storage and analysis to personal computer-based and, finally, to connectivity with “peer” instruments and supervisory software systems. Today’s CDS is multifunctional, multitasking, and often vendor-neutral.

Top 5 Signs That You Should Service or Replace Your Lab Washer

Top 6 Signs That You Should Service or Replace Your Microplate Reader or Handler

Top 6 Questions You Should Ask When Buying an Optical Microscope

Top 5 Signs That You Should Service or Replace Your Microwave Digester

Top 6 Signs that You Should Service or Replace Your Lab Oven

Top 11 Questions You Should Ask When Buying a Particle Size Analyzer

Refractometers come in all sizes, shapes, capabilities, and prices. Some readers may recognize refractometry as a “high school” analysis method or a specialized technique for measuring specific analytes like sugar in water. Increasingly, lab and process engineers employ refractometry to provide quick measures of key quality attributes that under normal circumstances would require much lengthier assays on significantly more expensive equipment.

Check out these quick tips before shopping for a new freezer for your lab

Assays from academics to industry require shakers. In the life sciences, for example, one expert says the new uses of shakers basically mimic what you see in the industry, which is an increase in the use of genomics. He adds shakers are used in almost every application in some fashion. For example, shakers are widely used in cell culture work.

Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, a subset of infrared (IR) spectroscopy, uses a mathematical algorithm, Fourier transform, to translate raw infrared data into a spectrum. FTIR is useful for the analysis of organic and inorganic compounds that exhibit changes in polarity as a result of the vibration, spinning, or perturbation of molecular bonds. FTIR methods are common in such industries as foods, materials, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, forensics, and others. Advantages of FTIR over conventional IR are higher resolution, better signal-to-noise, easier analysis of very small samples and poorly-absorbing species, and much more rapid analysis.

Atomic absorption (AA) has been known since the 19th century, but it was not until the 1950s, thanks to efforts by Alan Walsh at Australia’s CSIRO research center, that use of AA spectrometers became routine for metals analysis.

Top 6 Signs that You Should Service or Replace Your Raman Spectrophotometer

Ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis) spectrophotometry is arguably the most common as well as one of the oldest forms of absorption-based analysis. UV and visible regions of the electromagnetic spectrum are contiguous: UV wavelengths range from 10 to 4000 angstroms; they are visible from 4000 to 7000 angstroms.

Top 6 Signs That You Should Service or Replace Your Stirrer

Thermal analysis is the broad category of at least 20 techniques that measure some fundamental property of matter as a result of adding heat. For example, dilatometry measures volume changes upon heating, thermomechanical analysis quantifies the change in dimension of a sample as a function of temperature, and thermo-optical analysis detects changes in optical properties on heating or cooling.

Top 5 Signs that Your Thermal Cycler Needs to Be Serviced or Replaced

While titration is a basic analytical method, titrators are specialized instruments that perform titrations with minimal operator intervention. They can thus minimize errors, improve throughput, and facilitate documentation. There are two major titrator types: potentiometric acid-based designs and Karl Fischer titrators.

Vacuum pumps are an essential piece of equipment and are used in a wide variety of processes in most laboratories. Over the past 25 years, vendors have made significant innovative improvements to vacuum pumps, with important developments in high vacuum technology, corrosion resistance, vacuum control, and improvements in the efficiency and ecological impact of vacuum pumps.

A compact, multi-channel automated liquid handler offering speed, flexibility, ease of use and superior pipetting performance at a surprisingly affordable price.  NIMBUS system is a configurable platform with options of 96 multiprobe head or up to 4 independent channels.

INTEGRA has released a new video demonstrating a solid phase extraction (SPE) microplate method for reproducible, high throughput isolation of high-quality DNA-free RNA.

NuAire, Inc. offers two Biological Safety Cabinet designs, the LabGard® ES and the CellGard™ ES (Energy Saver) Class II, Type A2 models, available in four widths (3ft., 4ft., 5ft., & 6ft.). The LabGard® has a straight front 0° (vertical), the CellGard™ model features a 10° sloped front window, with a vertical sliding window encased in a frame that opens 30° to aid in cleaning behind the sash.

Labconco's RapidVap® Vertex dry evaporator uses a dry heat block to quickly evaporate samples under nitrogen steam.

XPert® Nano™ enclosures protect users during nanoparticle manipulation and dry powder chemical handling.

The oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC) assay is an analytical method to determine the antioxidant potential of nutraceutical, pharmaceutical and food ingredients.

Cell Culture and other laboratories that isolate and work with cells require the tools to safely and effectively remove wash and culture media away without harming their cells, and maintaining a safe laboratory environment. The new BVC fluid aspirators are third-generation systems that provide fine control, while providing the highest level of safety.

The one button operating principle that was a major success in our original Reference line has been re-vamped with additional premium characteristics to provide users with extraordinary precision and accuracy, a long service life, and an even more ergonomic design.

Starline Plug-In Raceway, has revolutionized the power distribution industry! 

Helmer has released new undercounter refrigerators and freezers that offer secure storage and consistent temperatures to provide safe storage of products while fitting under counters that meet the requirements for ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliant counters.

Confidently perform solid-phase extraction (SPE) cleanup of very small volumes with high analyte recovery and clean extracts in low elution volumes that can be directly injected into your LC/MS/MS system.

VACUUBRAND’s BVC integrated aspiration station is a safe, convenient system with a small footprint and the power to support two users.

Measuring the viscosity of creamy, pasty or heterogeneous material presents a challenge for rotational viscometers when using traditional smooth geometries such as coaxial cylinder, cone-plate, or simple disk spindles.

After 15 years of constant improvement, S.C.A.T. SafetyCaps belong to the global safety standard in pharmaceutical and chemical laboratories. They enable operators to get solvent vapors under control and create perfect solvent conditions for their HPLC systems.

The Nexar Optimized for Real Time Nucleic Acid Processing is a fully automated solution for low-volume, high-throughput sample processing that integrates liquid handling, DNA amplification, and real-time fluorescence detection in a single instrument. When combined with Douglas Scientific Array Tape™ and EnviroLogix DNAble®* chemistry, it provides a fast, high-quality alternative to real-time PCR for many research applications.

RADWAG New Series 3Y analytical balances

Polybrominated diphenyl ethers are a group of brominated flame retardants used primarily as additives in various plastics and polymers. Due to their widespread use as well as their tendency to leach from the polymer matrices, PBDEs have become a major class of environmental pollutants. The ability to bio-accumulate and the structural similarities to PCBs have led to concern over the possible health effects of PBDE exposure.

Top 5 Signs That You Should Service or Replace Your Class II Biological Safety Cabinet

Top 10 features/factors respondents look for when purchasing a fume hood

View some of the results from our latest pipettes product survey.

Freezers and refrigerators are an integral part of any laboratory that requires temperature controlled storage.