This is a question geared towards SDopers who may work in a lab, such as in pharmaceutical, petro-chemicals, etc. I was wondering what brand names of equipment are commonly found in the lab. Surely there are precision flow meters, metering pumps, gauges, ovens, etc. Which manufacturers are big in supplying such lab equipment?
My eternal thanks,
Hmm. You’ll have to narrow it down some. I work in a medical lab, and we have an entire shelf devoted to catalogues from various manufacturers, and that doesn’t include those that have them online.
Nalgene, Brinkmann, Hanna, Corning, Eppendorf, Sigma-aldrich
are some big ones.
Brooks, Kimax, La Pine, Dupont, Fisher Scientific, Shimadzu, Horiba, Ohaus, Sartorius, Balston, Cole Parmer … The list is endless.
Go here.
I work for a laboratory supply company and we have more than 300 suppliers. Our competitors surely have the same numbers of suppliers to choose from.
In recent year, the Thermo group seems to be buying up a lot of companies and consolidating its position as one of the big boys, but I have to go along with what has been said - the list is endless
Every year, there is a huge laboratory equipment convention called “the Pittsburgh Conference” (“PittCon”) where manufacturers display their wares. Go to www.pittcon.org for more info. If you get an opportunity, you should go; there’s nothing like it.
So many laboratory equipment suppliers exist that an annual catalogue that only lists manufacturers and suppliers is issued.
Sigma and Fisher seemed to be used the most for chemicals in my lab. We also order from Hampton, Beckman, New England Biosciences…
Everyone uses Kimwipes brand lint-free wipes, right? (Made by Kimberly-Clark.)
As already stated, most lab eqiupment manufacturers are small specialized companies. They sometimes have a near-monopoly in their niche market though. In my field of work (astronomy) everyone uses ZYGO interferometers for optical testing, and EG&G electronics for radiation-related experiments. Silicone adhesives will most likely be from Dow Corning, proportional counters (a type of radiation detector) by LND, and so on.
I work in a pharmaceutical lab.
Most of our chemicals are ordered from VWR or Sigma, with the occasional Fisher added in. For most things, VWR seems to be cheaper. Random lab supplies, like glassware and pipettes and gloves etc also come from VWR. And we use Kimberly-Clark Kimwipes!
Our equipment sources are much more varied. Our hardness, friability and disintegration testers are all from Erweka, though we also have one KEY hardness tester. A lot of our balances are from Metler Toledo, although we have a couple of Sartorius microbalances too. Sotax makes our bulk and tap density testers and flowability testers. HPLCs and GCs are all from Agilent, with the exception of one or two specialised units which I don’t know the source of. Viscosity testers are from Brookfield, and we have several Malvern or Beckman particle sizers. I think our UV/Vis systems are from HP, but I’m not sure of that. Karl Fischer titrators (standard and coulometric) are from Brinkmann. For some reason, most of the computers operating these things are from Dell.
These are the things I know of off-hand, but there are a bunch of other pieces of equipment throughout our labs that I don’t know the source of, mainly because I don’t use them (such as the dissolution apparatus, and the actuators). I have no idea where the stuff in Formulation Development, Processing, Manufacturing and the Pilot plant comes from, but I imagine these to be specific drug-manufacture equipment sources, and not just randomly/conveniently acquired equipment like in the analytical labs.
Most of our big equipment (in the tens of thousands of dollars range) comes from Roche, a German company. They also supply the reagents for use with said equipment.