Electronic pipette calibration

[Justina]

I am wondering what everyone's thoughts are on how far to go with calibration of electronic pipettes that have multiple settings/modes.

We are going to use the Biohit electronic pipette. There are two modes in particular that we will be using, the single volume mode and the multi-dispense mode. Now for calibration, do you feel that both modes should be calibrated separately, or would one suffice, or should there be a combination (such as 5X in single volume and 5X in multi-dispense for a total of 10 readings)?

Thanks in advance for any input!

[Deny Morlino]

Pipette MD / Sartorius is the company that provides service for Biohit pipettes in the US. They offer calibration services as well as repair. It appears that they calibrate via repetition at various points throughout the range the pipette is capable of dispensing. I would say single volume should suffice vs multiple dispense. You might check several volumes throughout the range to be sure the calibration is linear throughout the range. Just my two cents worth.

[Justina]

Thanks Deny for your reply.

We used an outside vendor earlier this year but decided to discontinue their service once we found out all of our pipettes where running out of range toward the end of the year. So we are going back to doing in house quarterly cleaning and calibration. Right now I'm working on a procedure to have us calibrate each volume we use. I am split on whether or not the different modes needs to be checked since our QA manager brought up checking multi-dispense, but I'm thinking this might be over kill.

[peterwilson]

This is a great device! I found some more information on this website: http://www.medicalexpo.com/medical-manufacturer/pipette-3291.html

This is a great device! I found some more information on this website: http://www.medicalexpo.com/medical-manufacturer/pipette-3291.html

[AMcCord]

I always checked both multi- and single dispense for the volumes used. I had one pipette that would check fine one way, but not the other (though I can't remember for sure anymore which was the problem - think it was the multi).