Calibrate a CO2 incubator every three to six months under standard use. Heavy-use units and critical applications need monthly checks. Always calibrate again after a repair, after a sensor change and at install. Do that no matter when the last visit happened. That is the short answer. But the right interval for your lab depends … Read more
Lab equipment maintenance covers five areas: cleaning, calibration, repair, refurbishment and replacement. Each one has its own cadence and its own owner. Together they decide whether your instruments produce reliable data or produce surprises. Three things hold a lab equipment maintenance program together: written procedures, maintenance records and trained staff. Without them, a maintenance program … Read more
You can check a freezer gasket seal in about ten minutes using four tests: feel for escaping cold air, shine a flashlight inside the closed unit, close a dollar bill in the door, then inspect the gasket and the surface it seals against. Each test finds a different kind of failure. So run all four … Read more
Lab refrigerator preventative maintenance comes down to five jobs: keep the gaskets sealing, keep the condenser coils clean, keep frost under control, load the unit so air can move, and verify that the displayed temperature is the real temperature. Most cold storage failures trace back to one of those five. None of them require a … Read more
The FDA requires drug makers to calibrate lab instruments at set intervals, follow a written program, and keep a record of every calibration. These rules live in 21 CFR Part 211, the current Good Manufacturing Practice regulations for finished drugs. However, Part 211 does not name an interval. Instead, it asks your lab to choose … Read more
Ultra low temperature (ULT) freezers protect some of the most valuable materials in your lab. That includes biological samples, cell lines, tissue, reagents, and certain vaccines. When a ULT freezer starts to fail, every minute matters. A short temperature excursion can ruin months of work. The good news is that many ULT freezer problems have … Read more
An environmental chamber is an enclosed unit that simulates controlled conditions such as temperature, humidity, pressure, vibration and light so engineers can measure how a product behaves before it ships. Also called an environmental test chamber or climatic chamber, it lets a manufacturer push a product past its expected operating range in a repeatable way, … Read more
What exactly is a ULT freezer? How do they work and how can you keep yours working for as long as possible? In this post, we’ll give you a basic overview of ULT freezers and give you some general information for how they work. In addition, we’ll discuss what makes them such an asset for … Read more
In the world of scientific research and clinical diagnostics, data is everything. The integrity of your results depends entirely on the accuracy of the instruments producing them. A pipette that’s off by a few microliters, a balance that drifts, a centrifuge running at the wrong RPM — these aren’t minor inconveniences.
A vital piece of lab equipment has broken down. Now what? How do you know if you should replace or repair your lab equipment? It can be tough making that decision. Especially when you are relying on scientific equipment to carry out your day-to-day operations. Additionally, you may find equipment that is not performing well … Read more