Previously, we have talked about the new version of our (reusable) flow-through capillary holder, a small batch of which has been graciously made by our amazing colleagues in a BAM workshop. We’ve made the designs available under a CERN permissive open hardware license, and we were very happy to hear that at least one group in Switzerland successfully replicated these based on that design.
For those that do not have the capabilities or capacity to make their own, we have also added a few capillary holders in the BAM webshop. Their primary “raison d’être” in the webshop is as a tool for people and institutes to more conveniently and accurately measure BAM’s liquid reference materials. These holders help with measuring those liquid reference materials more accurately, as you can sequentially measure the (same) empty capillary, the matrix/dispersant, and the reference sample itself all in the same spot. As the capillary, wall thickness and apparent sample thickness thus stay the same, data processing is greatly simplified, leading to smaller uncertainties on the data. That said, these adaptable holders can also be applied to a plethora of other low-viscosity liquid handling and measurement tasks if needed. They’ve been festooned with a plethora of mounting options as shown on the drawings, so making (or 3D printing) an adapter for your particular sample stage should be easy. If you can, we welcome the sharing of these adapter designs for others.
We’ve produced a few with already glued-in 1 mm capillaries (glued in on a best-effort basis), and will glue some more depending on demand. The capillaries can be replaced by the users themselves. The holders without glued-in capillaries (useful if you want to use your own preferred glue or capillaries) are easier and quicker for us to ship. While online sales are not our core business, we’re still aiming for a 10-working-day response time for orders. We do hope for your understanding that there might be occasional delays, however.
We welcome user feedback if you’ve used them, and I’m curious if you’ll see them out in the wild.
You can find the holders in the webshop here: