Looking for low cost equipment

[Daniel TerBush]

Hi,

I am new to these forums (just signed up today) and I am a high school chemistry teacher with a pretty extensive molecular biology, cell biology and biochemistry background. I just accepted a new teaching position and I want to develop a molecular biology course for seniors in high school. In order to do that, I need a fairly extensive list of equipment. I am hoping members of these forums will have some ideas abut how to obtain or make reliable equipment. One idea I intend to explore is whether NIH surplus out in Gaithersburg, MD (I live near DC) might be accessible to a private school for equipment donations.

Here is a list of things I need:

-80 freezer or freezer space.  I am thinking about posting on Craig's list to see if I can find space on a rental basis. Pretty unlikely my school will come up with money for a new freezer and I have checked some used equipment sites and it's hard to find something under 3k before shipping. There are also space issues at the school so I am not sure even if we could afford one, that we would have a place with reliable power back-up to place it. I have about 1k bacterial and yeast stains I'd love to keep alive although I doubt I'd need more than 10 for a course. More reasonably, I'd like to come up with one tower of space and I'd bite the bullet and throw everything away except 8 or 10 boxes.

2 incubators, one for 25˚C and one for 37˚C

At least one temperature controlled shaker, but really 2 would be ideal.

One thermocycler

One temperature controlled water bath

Several vortex mixers

One or two rocking platform shakers/mixers.

One eppendorf style centrifuge

One small general purpose centrifuge for spinning down bacterial and yeast cultures (about 4k in speed) using 250 mL size bottles with adaptors for 50 and 15 mL conicals would be ideal.

At least 4 sets of Ranin-style pipetmen

A couple of stir plates

Most of the other common things such as balances and a few other small devices we have.

Any ideas would be welcome. I'll keep my eyes on the responses and see if any of you guys can come up with some great ideas!

[ruphos]

Ebay. It really is quite an amazing resource for getting equipment. Even better if you feel confident in assessing the working status yourself, as a lot of the best deals are the result of someone buying several pallets of equipment on the cheap and trying to flip it. As a result the extent of testing is sometimes just "plugged it in, some lights turned on".

Being near DC, there should be nearby universities. Check to see if any of them have a surplus department. Reach out to the departments themselves and ask if they would like to donate equipment to your high school as they upgrade.

Hit or miss and can have a long time between purchase and delivery, but http://www.govliquidation.com/ can have some great equipment for low prices.

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[Bryan Bishop]

On Wed, May 2, 2012 at 6:39 PM, Daniel TerBush <ter...@wis.edu> wrote:

I am new to these forums (just signed up today) and I am a high school chemistry teacher with a pretty extensive molecular biology, cell biology and biochemistry background. I just accepted a new teaching position and I want to develop a molecular biology course for seniors in high school. In order to do that, I need a fairly extensive list of equipment.

I think all of these equipment questions would make fantastic student projects. The projects would be to either custom build or acquire the different pieces of equipment, explain and present how they work, and show whether or not they meet certain operating requirements. Then run some gels on the electrophoresis machines to show some standard ladders, show that the thermocycler is properly cycling and getting predictable results, etc. Getting all the equipment upfront on your own is also a pretty neat deal for the students.

- Bryan
http://heybryan.org/
1 512 203 0507

[Jeswin]

I was looking over your list and it seems like you got a lot of
incubators. Are they all necessary? In our lab, we have a temperature
controlled water bath (default 42C), a heating block (default 56C),
and a bacterial incubator/shaker (default 37C). I think you can get by
with just a heating block or water bath, though for a large class the
water bath lets you put in more samples. A bacterial incubator is
needed though. Maybe you can rig up a shaker inside it? Stir plates
and tabletop eppendorf mini-centrifuges are probably cheap online.

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[Chris Templeman]

Daniel,

This link has been posted on the forum before but since you are new you may have not seen it:

http://www.mlo-online.com/features/201112/tips-from-the-clinical-experts/the-quest-for-the-500-dollar-home-molecular-biology-laboratory.aspx 

May have a few pointers but generally Tor seems to be right about checking out eBay.

I wish you were near Boston, because there seems to be sales on craigslist ever once and a while.  I just got a -80C fridge from a biotech that was merging with another company for super-cheap.   Try craigslist and look for biotech companies on the decline / merger.

-Chris