These are some equipment models that I have found to be particularly good quality and good value. Not necessarily “precision scientific equipment for $9.99 or less.” It is cheap in the context of a company that is frugal but has some money and a lot of science to get done. I know I can make a Dremelfuge for almost free but that will be counterproductive to getting things done for lots of reasons1.
If you are going to buy a new benchtop microfuge, the RWD M1324 centrifuge is a good choice. I used to be a big fan of buying Eppendor 5415Ds from ebay. But you haven’t been able to get parts for those for like 10+ years. When they die (usually the power board) there is nothing to do unless you are going to replace the caps on the boards yourself. I haven’t had good luck getting good deals on microfuges from ebay lately. The ones with low prices die within a few months (10-20 hours of spin time maybe). So I guess I buy new centrifuges now.
I bought my M1324 from Virgil at MedRun, He provides great support and the cost was like half of whatever Eppendorf or Beckman were asking. Highly recommended.
I really like the rotor lid on the M1324. Quarter turn of the knob to get the lid on or off. I can do it one handed. Nothing beats the old pop lids of the 5415D. But no one makes those any more. The new Eppendorf lid requires multiple full turns of the knob which is a 2-handed affair. Overall the instrument is very quiet and easy to use. My only gripe is that some of the critical functionality, like changing the speed, is only available through a touch screen. It is a little cumbersome at times. Maybe if I spent more time with it I could figure out how to change the granularity of the speed controls so each press goes up or down 1,000 RCF instead of 50 RCF. The knobs on the 5415D were more ergonomic. But I know they were a common failure point. Anyways, overall the M1324 gets an A.
For comparison, I have a Eppendorf 5420 and a Beckman 20R. Both purchased new from the manufacturer. Both have inferior ergonomics and dealing with either of those companies makes me want to poke my eyes out.
If you want used centrifuges, Heritage Global Partners auctions are my preferred way. I have never received damaged instruments from them. Requires more lead time and effort than ebay, though.
For imaging gels and blots, my BioRad ChemiDoc has been rock solid. it can do colorimetric, chemiluminescence and various fluorescence wavelengths. It can dump the images on to our Synology NAS automatically. We use it all day every day, even weekends. It has never broken or needed any sort of repair.
In the early days of Mozza we tried various setups with cameras rigged up on stands, inside boxes. Various lights and filters jury-rigged inside the box with lab tape. It was a hot mess. After we raised some money we test drove the Thermo iBright, the Chemidoc, something from BioTechne. The iBright and BioTechne instruments required training just to do a demo because the interfaces were not intuitive at all. I don’t want to sit through a webinar to learn how to take a picture of an agarose gel. The ChemiDoc just works.
I think we paid around 20k USD for it. Which is not cheap by most people’s standards. But I don’t regret it. It has been a workhorse.
Don’t buy Tomy autoclaves. They refuse to sell spare parts unless you pay for them to send out a “highly trained technician” to install it “using their proprietary process”. The person they send will not actually have any training or experience and will just be a generic appliance repair guy who will figure out how to install the part on his own, which Tomy will charge you a lot of money for. This practice is illegal in California. Tomy sold it to me in California. Fuck those guys. Nice autoclaves, though.
Eppendorf Innova refrigerated shakers. I bought 2 Innova 42R refrigerated shakers with a stacking kit and white glove installation. Somewhere around 34k USD in 2023. Installation was in fact hands-free for me. But at the first sign of trouble when one incubator stopped cooling, they blamed everything on our building. Low voltage at the wall socket. We have an electrician run 2 dedicated 20A circuits, one for each shaker. After much back and forth, Eppendorf comes out and replaces a circuit board. A couple months later it dies again. They say it’s too close to a window and the unit can’t handle the heat load. We install rigid foam insulation over the window. More back and forth. Eppendorf comes out and replaces the circuit board again. Couple months later, both units stop cooling. Now it’s “you didn’t clean out the filter over the evaporator, they need to be cleaned every 6 months.” Well, Eppendorf was on site fixing these units 3 months ago. Why didn’t the service tech clean it? A lot of back and forth. They say they will fix it 1 last time, but only if we move the shakers to a new spot. We rearrange equipment and make space for them. Eppendorf comes out, moves the units to the new spot and fixes them again. Then we get a pro-tip from a former Eppendorf repair tech - the internal blower fans are unidirectional and 50% of the time they are installed backwards which causes the circuit boards to burn out. We open the guts of the shakers and change the direction of the fans. Never had any problems since.
Eppendorf should get their act together and stop blaming customers for the enshitification of their once great products. The current Eppendorf shakers are a product line acquired through the purchase of New Brunswick. I have seen lots of 30+ year old New Brunswick shakers still going strong, shaking 24/7. I give my Eppendorf shakers a few more years before they completely melt down.
Unfortunately I don’t have a recommendation for alternatives. Before these units we bought a similar product from a random Alibaba factory. Those didn’t last more than a year before the touchscreens stopped functioning. To their credit they did send us replacement parts for free and were able to provide some assistance over email. There just wasn’t much that could help those hacked together machines. When they finally croaked, Mozza was going through a “only buy new” phase because we had raised more money than we needed. Which is how we ended up on Eppendorf.
Anything from Beckman. They will rake you over the coals for spare parts and are completely unwilling to help. They will help you part with your money, though.
I am not saying that 3D printed parts have no place in a lab. Our lab has plenty of those. I think the way Plasmidsaurus uses printed parts is the way to do it. They should augment your workflow in ways that OEM stuff can’t. Not replace entire, complex instruments. And as with any decisions regarding saving money by DIYing things, you have to weigh the hit to your runway versus the hit to your velocity. ↩︎