Posted on: June 4, 2018 Posted by: James McQuiston Comments: 1

Precision and accuracy are the two main attributes that determine the success of an experiment that includes pipetting. Both the determining factors can be challenged if you fail to choose the right kind of pipette tips. Based on the type of experiment you are performing, using the wrong type of pipette can lead to issues like contamination. This further leads to several harmful results including physical damage and wastage of precious samples along with the reagents. Although the physical harm mostly happens in the form of RSI or repetitive stress injury, it is important to follow some steps while choosing the ideal tip for pipetting.

It goes without saying that there is an eclectic range of tips available in the market, which makes the selection even tougher. To make things easier for you, here is a guide that describes the important considerations to bear in mind while selecting the right pipette tip for your experiment:

A High-Quality Product Keeping Precision and Accuracy in Mind

As mentioned above, while buying the right kind of tip for pipetting, the first and foremost consideration is finding a product that offers top-class precision and accuracy features. For instance, pipetting cannot be precise if there is any kind of variation in the batches. Variations in pipette tips mostly occur due to the poor manufacturing process that displays a clear case of the cost issue. Building quality tips require money; hence stay away from investing in cheap pipette tips. Simply put, focus on premium quality tips ensuring minimum variation even if it costs you few more extra bucks.

As far as the accuracy of your pipette is concerned, it can be only affected in case you fail to buy a suitable tip for the pipette barrel. Inaccurate pipetting is not airtight and can lead to contamination over time. With that being said, check out these three kinds of pipette tips that are widely used for experiments:

  • Filter Pipette Tips

Also termed as barrier and non-barrier tips, the filter tips are furnished for enduring various conditions. While non-barrier tips are specifically designed for daily lab experiments, barrier tips come in handy to ensure that there is no kind of contamination taking place. In other words, the barrier tips offer security to precious samples and your pipette, in case you are going to put viscous, volatile or corrosive chemical in the application. You can get this kind of pipette tips from both online and offline stores.

  • Standard Pipette Tips

The standard or non-filter or non-barrier pipette tips are used in multiple non-sensitive applications. In general, labs use this kind of pipetting tips for storing isolate plasmid DNA, agarose gel, and other similar chemical components. Common in every lab setting, the standard pipette tip caters well to the normal laboratory budget.

  • Low-Retention Tips

Even in standard pipette tips, it is often likely to witness a small amount of liquid left. With low-retention tips, this situation can be easily avoided, as they are customized with a hydrophobic plastic additive which prevents the liquid from adhering to the inside of the pipette tips.

Conclusion

Hopefully, this guide will help you in making the right selection of pipette tips. Having a basic understanding of pipette tips and the different available options is necessary for shopping the right item.

1 people reacted on this

  1. What a great blog!!! Thanks for sharing this information with us. This is very useful information for me. Patel Heaters is also working in the same industry.

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