Laboratory Glassware

Laboratory Glassware

Progress in all fields of science is dependent on the tools available for experimentation to the scientist. Glass, because of its availability, versatility, and flexibility, plays a vital role as an important laboratory implement for the analytical chemist.

A typical research laboratory can be productive with the fertile brain of the scientist and custom glassware to transfer his idea to reality through experiments. Even a large production house often needs custom glassware to deal with a unique requirement of the product.

The various types of glass are available to deliver the desired property in the laboratory. Borosilicate glass, which is made of silica and boron oxide, is the most common material for Laboratory Glassware, due to its resistance to high temperatures and corrosive materials. Silica (96%) glass has all the advantageous properties of borosilicate glass plus excellent thermal shock resistance and high service temperature characteristics. One can use alkali-resistant glass for handling alkaline solutions. Low actinic glass can be used where ultraviolet light absorption is desired. Aluminosilicate glass provides high service temperatures of up to 800 °C. Fused silica or Quartz gives good optical transmission properties.

The most carefully executed experiment can give erroneous results with the use of dirty glassware. Tools contaminated with grease and other materials prevent the glass from being uniformly wetted, distorts the meniscus and affect the volume of liquid delivered or measured. Keeping the Laboratory Glassware physically neat and clean, free of grease and bacteria is therefore of the utmost importance. Apart from the use of detergent, chromic acid for cleaning contaminated glassware some time they do need to sterilize too. Washed and clean tools need to be placed in an enclosure to protect from dust deposition. With proper care and maintenance, you can not only increase the life of your labware but can also enhance your lab reliability.

If one is looking for something mundane glassware, such as graduated cylinders, pipettes, burettes, volumetric flasks, beakers and Erlenmeyer flasks Questron can be competitive with most sources for class A glassware. The quality of the measurements obtained from these tools depends heavily on the care taken in calibrating and in using each instrument. In order to avoid introducing systematic errors into measurements, each of these instruments is properly calibrated and go through the stringent test.

Questron does lots of prototyping as well. If you need some very specific configuration of custom glassware, Questron is very happy to work with you to produce custom glassware. Visit www.QTechCorp.com for more information.