Questions before a pipette enquiry

A pipette enquiry that says only "micropipette" asks someone else to guess the measurement. The decision this guide supports is which questions to answer before you send the request, so the reply can name a range, a displacement type, a tip, and a document. How that instrument should then be held is in accurate micropipetting technique. The enquiry does not replace that habit. It makes the habit possible to buy for.

Volume range, written as work rather than as a habit

List the volumes that change a result. Include the awkward small ones. A pipette whose nominal volume is far above those settings will often carry a wider relative tolerance there. The specification should ask for errors at the volumes you use, including one near the bottom if you work there. If two ranges overlap the work, say whether you want one instrument that covers both or two instruments that keep each volume nearer the middle of a range.

Channel count is part of the range question. An eight-channel and a single channel with the same nominal volume are different tools. Say whether you fill columns of a 96-well plate, rows, or single tubes. Say if some channels must be switched off. A multichannel enquiry that forgets the tip family will be answered with a head that is only as good as the loosest cone.

Air displacement or positive displacement

Ask which liquids the pipette will meet. Aqueous buffers, dilute standards, and master mixes point to air displacement and forward pipetting. Glycerol-rich, oily, foaming, or volatile liquids point at least to a conversation about reverse pipetting and often to positive displacement, where a piston travels in the tip. Write the liquid class in ordinary words. "Harsh chemicals" is not a class. Ethanol, acetone, acetonitrile, dilute acids, and a named detergent are classes a seal material can be compared with.

Density and temperature belong in the same paragraph if they are extreme for you. A laboratory that works in a hot room, or that moved from the coast to a high hill station, should say that the instrument will be checked at the place of use. ISO 8655-1:2022 is the terminology and user-recommendation standard that makes those influences speakable. It does not promise a unit is accurate on delivery day. The numerical pipette limits live in ISO 8655-2:2022 and in the manufacturer specification. Say which of those you want the quotation to claim.

Tip family and the document

Name the tip. If you already have a family that seals, say so and ask the pipette to match it. If you do not, ask which tip the pipette's specification was tested with, and include that tip in the same request. Filter or plain, low-retention or ordinary, wide-orifice or standard: each is a fork. A universal sentence is not a seal.

Calibration documentation is its own question, not a mood. Ask whether the document will state the date, the reference, the volumes, and the systematic and random errors. Ask whether the test temperature is printed. A laboratory that will compare later gravimetric checks with that document, in the style of checking a pipette between calibrations, needs the specification identified. NIST's Office of Weights and Measures and BIPM are the public backdrop for those units. They are not a substitute for the line in your enquiry.

Chemical exposures, then the branch when you do not know

If the bench pipettes solvents or acids, write them. The branch may be a more resistant seal, a shorter service discussion based on the manufacturer's recommendation, or a positive-displacement tip that is thrown away with the exposure. If you truly do not know the future liquids, say the pipette is for aqueous molecular biology and that solvent use would be a new specification. Do not leave a blank and accept an instrument that cannot be serviced after the first acetone week.

If the work is repetitive, say how often the thumb travels, and ask whether a lighter spring class exists inside the error limits you need. That is an ergonomic specification, not a medical one. If a robot head is the real question, say deck labware and dead volume instead of pretending it is a handheld pipette.

Branch when the reply offers a family name and no errors, no tip, and no exposure answer. Ask again. A catalogue page is a map of classes, not a completed specification. Use the scientific instruments catalogue and the laboratory consumables catalogue to see the classes, then send the completed questions with the quotation request.

Safety and the limit of a quotation

An enquiry is not an exposure assessment. You still follow institutional rules for solvents, acids, and biological agents. Do not send hazardous samples as examples. This guide is research sourcing. It does not approve a diagnostic use and it does not claim that a document has already been issued for a unit you have not received.

What "enough" looks like

If a teaching practical and a research assay share a cupboard, say so. The small volumes students attempt should not be stranded at the bottom of a research pipette's range. Enough is a short list a stranger can answer without inventing your bench: volumes, mechanism, channels, tip, document, exposures. Send it once, completely, with the quotation request. If a later drop or a new solvent changes the bench, that is a new question, not a complaint that the old document aged.