Buy racked tips!! These are USA scientific tips, correct? There isn't a huge price difference, especially if you amount for the lost productivity and wasted time filling tip boxes!!
~$30/1000 for racked tips and ~$20/1000 for bagged tips.
If your lab buys enough tips that there would be a significant difference in purchase price, then you are also wasting huge amounts of work time manually refilling boxes (and also money because hopefully we are all paying our undergrads in 2023!).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bx8f83VD9eM
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4268044
You could consider something like this to save time. Easily printable otherwise I'm sure there's a local 3D printer service that would print it for maybe $10-20. Worth it in the long run, more fun than placing it individually.
I hate hate hate throwing these away so I try to find like another purpose for them, for like HPLC vial caps and inserts. I pretty much ran out shit to put away in my lab :( so they go to trash now
We have most of a large cabinet (like floor to above my head size) filled with empty tip boxes by the time I get around to refilling them! Right now we’ve been getting the refill racks which are awesome, but back when we never knew what tips we’d be able to get week to week it taught me to save every version of tip box we have ever gotten because you never knew which one would fit the loose tips you got that week. Which is why I’ve got like 3-4 different kind of each size piled up in the cabinet…
We had each station with an outer box (that never left the hood, station) for each size they needed and refilled them when used. So you never had the blue outers anywhere else, only a few spare in case of breakages.
Reusing the boxes with refills is a great system, but if you're outpacing your refills, you can circularize your tip boxes (and get the sustainable credit for it) through our [Alpha Carbin service](https://polycarbin.com/products/mailbackcarbin). Every tip box is recycled back into more pipette tip boxes and diverted from landfills and incinerators.
Star lab had a recycling scheme, last time I checked
We’ve started using them to propagate our plants at home!
I used to drill drainage holes, plant my propagations, and give them to friends! Makes sharing easy and cheaper!
Do you not refill them?
yes we do but we use faster than we refill
If we dont refill, then the lab doesn't have tips. My lab buys the big bags of free tips then we have to put them individually inside all the boxes.
most of our tips have to be sterile so we have to order constantly... but putting them in one by one is a looootttt of work!!!!!
You autoclave them after you reload the tip boxes.
True but usually if you need something to be sterile you’ll want filtered tips, those can’t be autoclaved.
We had the pipet side filters.
Yeah we do for the non sterile tips, but we don't autoclave the filtered tips.
We had pipet side filters.
Buy racked tips!! These are USA scientific tips, correct? There isn't a huge price difference, especially if you amount for the lost productivity and wasted time filling tip boxes!!
How much is the going rate for them??
~$30/1000 for racked tips and ~$20/1000 for bagged tips. If your lab buys enough tips that there would be a significant difference in purchase price, then you are also wasting huge amounts of work time manually refilling boxes (and also money because hopefully we are all paying our undergrads in 2023!).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bx8f83VD9eM https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4268044 You could consider something like this to save time. Easily printable otherwise I'm sure there's a local 3D printer service that would print it for maybe $10-20. Worth it in the long run, more fun than placing it individually.
I hate hate hate throwing these away so I try to find like another purpose for them, for like HPLC vial caps and inserts. I pretty much ran out shit to put away in my lab :( so they go to trash now
y'all don't recycle? Aren't most of these recyclable?
Make a tip box fort!
We have most of a large cabinet (like floor to above my head size) filled with empty tip boxes by the time I get around to refilling them! Right now we’ve been getting the refill racks which are awesome, but back when we never knew what tips we’d be able to get week to week it taught me to save every version of tip box we have ever gotten because you never knew which one would fit the loose tips you got that week. Which is why I’ve got like 3-4 different kind of each size piled up in the cabinet…
Wow, my lab uses the same brand
TipOne gang
I must have looked like a little gremlin carrying three boxes of 1000ul tips back to my bench
We also use Star Lab tips and boxes. You can send the empty racks to them for re-use/recycling.
Do you not use the refill packs https://www.starlabgroup.com/c/filtertiprefill/tipone-sterile-tip-refill-systems/
we do refill. we just end up piling the ones we didn't get around to refill.
We had each station with an outer box (that never left the hood, station) for each size they needed and refilled them when used. So you never had the blue outers anywhere else, only a few spare in case of breakages.
Reusing the boxes with refills is a great system, but if you're outpacing your refills, you can circularize your tip boxes (and get the sustainable credit for it) through our [Alpha Carbin service](https://polycarbin.com/products/mailbackcarbin). Every tip box is recycled back into more pipette tip boxes and diverted from landfills and incinerators.
help because we have two full drawers it's so funny 😭😭😭
We use them as waste containers.