A practical guide to selecting an electronic pipette

 You only need to glance around any lab to be amazed by the sheer variety of instruments they employ—both in terms of quantity and size. These pieces of equipment can be big, taking up roughly half the space in the room, or small, taking up only a benchtop or even less. The electronic pipette is a piece of compact but crucial equipment that is common on various lab counters.

It is safe to state that without it, a lab is lacking. The challenge one has is how to select an electronic pipette while handling a particular activity because a pipette can be employed for a variety of purposes. You can follow our easy, step-by-step instructions for this. Writing down the specifics of the pipette experiment you plan to do is a preparatory step. The number of samples, the volume being transferred, replicates, the need for sterile conditions, and other factors should all be included.

Creating a precise list of the steps in this way will facilitate selecting the appropriate pipette.

Step 1 - Selecting the type of pipette

Air displacement micropipettes and positive displacement micropipettes are the two primary categories of micropipettes. By comparing their applicability to the experiment, you want to conduct; you can pick the best one.

Positive displacement pipettes are utilized for radioactive, corrosive, dense, and viscous substances as well as applications like PCR and DNA amplification procedures. Air displacement pipettes are best for aqueous samples or applications involving ordinary pipetting.

Step 2 – More factors for selecting your pipette

 

·         Fixed or variable volume pipette

After selecting the suitable type, consider the subtypes available depending on parameters such as the volume to be handled, tip quality, manual or electronic pipettes, and so on. This is when the experiment's finer details will come in handy.

You can either use a pipette with a fixed volume or one whose volume can be modified as needed.If you frequently utilize a single volume, such as 100ul, in your studies, choose a fixed-volume pipette. If your experiment requires you to work with a variety of volumes, select a variable or adjustable pipette.

 

·         The Volume to be handled

As a general rule, choose the smallest pipette capable of handling the required volume because when the set volume is close to the micropipette's minimum capacity, the accuracy and precision of the readings drop.

 

·         Single or Multichannel Pipette

This decision can be influenced by the number of samples or replicates used. When the number of samples is small, single-channelelectronic pipettes however multichannel micropipettes can easily manage large numbers of samples or well plates (8-channel and 12-channel).

·         Pipette tips

This is the most important decision to make after you've chosen your pipette. Conical or cylindrical tips, universal or pipette specific, filtered or non-filtering, and graded are all options.

If the experiment calls for sterile, aseptic circumstances, utilize filtered and sterile tips. Universal tips can be used with a variety of pipettes.

The above factors can easily change your mind while selecting an electronic pipette.

Electronic pipettes have begun to replace manual pipettes because they are more ergonomic. Electronic micropipettes boost productivity, eliminate errors, limit the range of use to prevent pipette breakage, and are relatively simple to operate. One such pipette is the Microlit Electronic Pipette. This electronic pipette is particularly user-friendly and is based on a stepper motor with microprocessor-controlled piston movement. The degrees of accuracy and precision are high and user-independent.