Does using pipette guns in this way also affect the lab's cost control program?
Controlling liquid handling costs and maintaining higher quality pipette performance through pipette use is a challenge for any laboratory. Most rely on regular calibration services to protect their pipettes from inaccuracies and wear and tear, but over time, calibration alone is not enough to control the cost of pipetting procedures. So relying on calibration alone to save on pipetting costs is not enough.
Sources of Pipetting Costs
The main factors contributing to pipette wear and tear are as follows.
1. Inaccurate pipette calibration or equipment measurement errors due to irregular maintenance: Pipette accuracy is the key to liquid handling and ensuring experimental accuracy. Therefore, when choosing a pipette, the accuracy of the pipette is of paramount importance. If you are greedy for cheap and choose a poor quality pipette or a long time without calibration, use or even with a faulty or even broken pipette for experimental operations, it is easy to add inaccurate samples, drainage is not exhausted and other phenomena, which seriously affects the accuracy of experimental results. For the more demanding experiments, and even directly cause sample contamination so that the entire experiment ruined, the loss is not worth it.
2. The experimental operator's skills and techniques are not skilled and the measurement errors. In the experimental process, the experimenter's operational proficiency is also directly related to the accuracy of pipetting. Therefore, it is also necessary to strengthen the training of laboratory personnel in pipette use and pipetting-related knowledge. This is also one of the main measures to reduce pipetting cost loss.
3. Pipette tip mismatch. The matching of pipette tips is also important. Since many pipettes on the market are not made by the same manufacturer as the pipette tips, this results in matching differences between the pipette gun and the pipette tips. These differences include easy dislodgement of the tips, over-tightening of the tips, difficulty in retiring the tips, and insufficient sample volume. Such a situation not only aggravates the time cost of the experiment, but also makes the experimenter irritable and affects the whole experimental process, and may even affect the accuracy of the experimental data.
4. the pipette does not match the characteristics of the liquid being measured. This is also one of the factors that increase the cost of sample handling. Due to the different design principles and sealing performance of pipettes, most common pipettes are designed for common laboratory reagents: for example: enzymes, serum, buffers, cells, etc. And liquids that are too acidic or viscous: for example: HCL, petroleum, etc. These liquids are easily corroded and clogged by misuse or inhalation inside the pipette. So for such liquids as oil rainin also has pipettes to match them. Care should be taken when selecting or using them.
To save on liquid handling costs through pipette use, in addition to understanding the sources of cost loss, a more comprehensive pipette management plan is needed to.
1. Choose a better quality, more accurate single channel pipette with a good after-sales guarantee. Choosing a high quality pipette will be slightly more expensive to purchase, but in the long run it will reduce the cost of pipette maintenance.
2. Regular maintenance, servicing, calibration and cleaning. To ensure the performance and accuracy of pipettes. The content includes: calibration or self-calibration of pipettes, periodic calibration, daily spot checks, and inspection before use.
3. Conduct regular training on pipette operation. Regular laboratory pipette operation training is meaningful to improve the quality and operating skills of laboratory personnel. Only operators with skilled skills and familiar with pipette use precautions, in order to reduce or avoid errors in experimental data brought about by misuse, pipette damage and other unnecessary cost waste.
4 Try to use the same family of pipette guns and tips to ensure the matching of pipettes. Try to use the original matching pipette tips, if you replace the tips of different manufacturers, be sure to conduct a trial and match test party section for replacement to avoid wasting experimental costs.
5. The experimenter should be familiar with the characteristics of the liquid and use the pipette that matches it for operation. Avoid or reduce the occurrence of pipette failure due to mismatch of the liquid being handled.
Although each potential factor contributing to measurement error may be small (2-5%), even they can compound into large errors (10-20%). At μL volumes, a high level of measurement accuracy is required, and inaccurate measurements can result in experimental data errors of up to 50% or more, which can lead to costly risks of rework, wasted reagents, or lost samples.
Our laboratory instrument supplies include single channel pipettes, eight-channel pipettes, pipette tips, PCR plates, PCR tubes, centrifuge tubes, cell culture dishes, etc. Learn more about the Yongyue Medical website.
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