Pipettes start life as glass tubes that need to be pulled by our micropipette puller so that they taper to a fine point.

Major glass tubes in use#

itemspecsusesuseful puller programs
Sutter Instrument
BF150-110-7.5
‘Thinwall’ Heavy Polish
Borosilicate glass
1.5 OD
1.1 ID
7.5 cm Long
filament: yes
electrophysiology, mostly ‘cleaning’ use instead of un-polished WPI glass to avoid re-chloriding wire after scraping
Sutter Instrument
BF150-86-7.5HP
‘Thickwall’ Heavy Polish
Borosilicate glass
1.5 mm OD
0.86 mm ID
7.5 cm Long
filament: yes
electrophysiology
Warner
G100-F
Pressurised ATP delivery
Pressurised KCl delivery
56 [ATP delivery - Alex Bates]

Filling a pipette#

You will need to fill your pipette with fluid. To do this:

Equipment:#

  1. Your pulled glass pipette
  2. VWR gel-loading tips, cat#76321-828
  3. Other gel-loading tips may be preferable depending on what you are doing.
  4. Typicall you want 200ul, ~0.5 mm rounded end tips.
  5. A Pipetman mechanical pipette or similar
  6. Your fluid, e.g. saline

Process#

  1. Load tip into mechanical pipette.
  2. Load fluid into tip.
  3. Eject into the back (non-tapered end) of your glass pipette.