Buyer's Guides
A buyer's guide to everyday laboratory consumables — microcentrifuge tubes, culture dishes, pipette tips and specimen transport, and how to specify each correctly.
OMS Clinical Team
Product Specialists
Laboratory consumables look interchangeable in a catalogue and are not. Tube wall thickness decides whether a sample survives centrifugation; dish venting decides whether a culture dries out; tip fit decides whether a pipette is accurate. This guide covers what to specify and why.
The common 1.5ml snap-lid tube is the default for sample handling. The specification that matters most is the rated g-force — a tube rated below your rotor speed will deform or split.
| Specification | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Rated g-force | Must exceed the maximum speed of your rotor |
| Lid type | Snap lids are fast; screw caps seal better for storage |
| Graduations | Moulded graduations survive solvents; printed ones do not |
| Autoclavable | Required if tubes are sterilised in house |
| Sterility | Pre-sterilised where downstream work is contamination sensitive |
Tips are the most common source of quiet inaccuracy in a laboratory. A tip that does not seal properly on the pipette shaft delivers less than the set volume every single time, and the error is invisible without calibration.
A poorly fitting tip is not a small problem — it is a systematic error applied to every result until someone calibrates.
Samples leaving the laboratory must be packaged so that a leak does not compromise the paperwork or the handler. Use a specimen transport bag with an integral document pocket, and check whether the sample falls under UN3373 packaging requirements for biological substances in transit.
Optimised Medical Supplies stocks laboratory consumables including microcentrifuge tubes, culture dishes, pipette tips and specimen transport bags. Order before 4pm for next-day dispatch on stocked lines.
Buyer's Guides
