Grease Machine (fwd)

[Ingo Korndorfer <ingo@uoxray.uoregon.edu>]

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i have been watching this for a while now, in our lab and in ads.
and it's not, that i want to spoil anybody's business.
but i thought this might be worth sharing, also it seems so trivial.
haven't ever heard anybody else mention it. 

so, supposedly, it takes 10 minutes to grease a plate ????

well, i think it takes me 20 seconds. maybe 30.

what i/we do is the following :

- take the lid of a little plastic box about half to 1/3
  the size of a crystal tray. could be anything, just has
  to be flat and have some sort of handle in the back.

- take a spatula and dip it into your grease pot and apply an even,
  say 0.5 mm grease coating to your plastic box lid.
  this doesn't have to perfect. play with it  and try it out.
  not too thick, not to thin.

- then you use this as a stamp and 'stamp' your grease onto
  the wells. you'll quickly develop a feel for how to get the
  stamping work out nicely. don't press to hard.
  move your little plate over the tray in a tapping motion,
  slowly covering all of the wells.
  you'll see ...

- admitted, you will get speckles of grease between the wells, but
  it does not matter.

- as a last step you have your grease gun/syringe ready,
  to fill in the little gaps, that haven't been covered.
  (i have to fix up every other plate a little bit).

- all set. not perfect, but simple, fast and CHEAP.
  no more carpal tunnel syndrome, no more tendonitis
  from greasing.


i know, this is trivial. also, you won't have a precisely defined
gap to let the air out. but hey, it works. the proof is in the pudding
(???), in my case a few new crystal forms, structures, mutant structures.


                          ingo korndoerfer
                          matthews lab, university of oregon
                          eugene, or 97403



>I'm looking for a grease machine to grease crystallization plates and I 
>was wondering if there were companies other than Hampton Research that 
>offers one.
>
>Thanks
>
>Cindy Sinars
>crs16@cornell.edu
>Cornell University