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Air Cooling™
Use/Operation
Troubleshooting
Specifications
Air Cooling:
What is
"Air Cooling™"?
The
Air Cooling™ models have fans which exchange air with their
surroundings; they have nothing that actually chills the
instrument. Air Cooling™ is useful if you're running several sample cycles in a row
or if your samples are extra sensitive to heating up.
Normally, the samples in the Bullet Blender™
only heat up a few degrees and stay quite cool. However,
if you're running a second batch of samples soon
afterwards, they will heat up a little more because the
Bullet Blender™
is starting out slightly warmer. The Air Cooling™
keeps the Bullet Blender™
cooler so that the first batch of samples heat up a little
less and subsequent batches are kept just about as cool as
the first batch.
Which models
have Air Cooling™?
The
Air Cooling™
feature
comes on the "Blue"
models: Bullet Blender™
Blue which uses microcentrifuge tubes and the Bullet
Blender™ Blue 50
which uses 50 mL tubes. In fact, because the 50 mL
tubes require more time to homogenize the bigger samples,
All Bullet Blenders for 50 mL tubes come with Air
Cooling™.
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Use and
Operation:
What types
of tubes can be used?
The Bullet Blender™
and Bullet Blender™
Blue
work with 1.5 mL, 1.7 mL, and 2.0 mL polypropylene sample tubes,
such as Axygen brand,
including conical, and round bottom microcentrifuge tubes.
The different shapes will provide different results.
The Bullet Blender™
Blue 50 work with 50 mL BD Falcon™
and Krackeler brand polypropylene tubes. The
slightly hazy polypropylene tubes are tougher and resist
the striking better than the clearer tubes, which might
crack at higher speeds. Use high quality tubes,
rather than bargain brand tubes which are not as strong.
How do you
set the Bullet Blender™ to mix, disrupt, or homogenize different types of samples?
You can adjust the speed and the duration. Adjusting
the speed affects how firmly the balls will strike the
sample tubes, while adjusting the duration affects the
total number of impacts. Homogenizing tough tissue
requires longer durations at full speed, while mixing
requires lower speeds.
How easy is
it to operate the
Bullet
Blender™?
Simply place up to 24 sample
tubes in the holders (located in a circle, just as with
most centrifuges), set the desired duration and speed, and
push start. All the samples will be processed
simultaneously, without any chance of cross contamination.
How much volume of
sample can be homogenized in each microcentrifuge tube?
As for the amount of tissue to use in the
Bullet Blender, we recommend from 50-300mg of tissue in
a standard microcentrifuge tube. Less than 50mg will
work, but it requires careful attention to the amount of
beads and volume of homogenization buffer. As with any
experiment, errors become larger as the measured quantity
gets smaller, so reproducibility becomes an issue.
Samples larger than 300mg are also possible-- the problem
there becomes the mobility of the tissue sample and beads
in the tube. The air volume inside the tube is critical
to allow the sample to be ground up inside the tube, so if
the tube is more than 75% full, the efficiency of the
homogenization is reduced.
The 50 mL tubes can hold up to about 2 g of sample tissue
or cultured cells, and a total of 15 mL of sample, buffer,
and beads combined.
Do sample
tubes need to be placed symmetrically?
No. There are no restrictions as to which holes to place
your sample tubes in.
Is it possible to
homogenize tissue, which is frozen in liquid nitrogen?
It is possible to homogenize tissue that
was frozen in liquid nitrogen. Immerse the frozen tissue
in cold buffer, allowing it to thaw. Then treat it as
other fresh tissue samples.
One of the significant advantages of the
Bullet Blender™ is that samples remain in individual tubes
without the introduction of probes or pestles. Thus
cross-contamination will not occur. Adding liquid
nitrogen to freeze your samples, which inherently adds
exogenous material to your sample, increases the
likelihood of contamination.
How do you retrieve
the sample from the tubes?
After
the Bullet Blender™ stops, centrifuge the tubes as you
would to clarify the lysate prior to use in your
molecular biology techniques.
Can we use all listed
beads (glass, zirconium, steel balls) for all purposes?
The different beads are recommended for
different applications, as shown in our
bead selection guide. Generally, glass beads are for
yeast, bacteria, and low density tissues (brain, liver,
etc.). Zirconium silicate and zirconium oxide beads
are for tougher tissue, and stainless steel beads for very
fibrous or dense samples. That being said, often customers would like to
standardize their homogenizations using one type of bead,
so if they use difficult tissues (heart, lung, etc) they
will use stainless beads and try to stick with them for
their other applications because they know how they
behave. We offer a variety of types of different sizes
and density to give our customers flexibility in
developing their own protocols. Given that different
beads have some tissues are tougher than others, it is easy to imagine that one type
of bead of a given size will have a better grinding
behavior than another.
Which beads should I use?
The
Protocols page contains suggested beads, speeds, and
durations for processing many types of tissues and cells.
The
Bullet Blender™
beads
web page has a
bead selection table. If you are working with a
sample not shown on the table, check the table below which
has guidelines to use for selecting beads.
The two basic rules: (1) use beads of approximately the
same size as the size of your samples, to maximize the
collisions between beads and samples, and (2) use denser
beads for tougher samples. You can
also contact our technical support service at
techsupport@nextadvance.com. See the
Contact
webpage.
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Troubleshooting
If nothing
happens,
check that the Bullet
Blender™ is
plugged in and that power switch on the front of the
instrument is turned on.
If the unit
stops working,
turn the system off for 15 minutes to allow the
electronics to reset. If the
Bullet Blender
does not turn on after this period, contact customer
service.
If the caps
on the microcentrifuge tubes pop open or the caps on 50 mL
tubes loosen up,
make sure that the interface regions or screw threads
between the lids and the caps is dry when you close the
caps or screw them on, so that there is enough friction
for the caps to remain tight.
If samples
in some or all the tubes are not processed well,
the tubes are over filled.
Allow at least 0.5 mL of air in the microtubes and do not
fill the 50 mL tubes with more than a total of 15 mL of
buffer, beads, and sample.
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Specifications:
The Bullet
Blender™ works all over the world.
The Bullet Blender™ uses 24V DC
supplied by a small external power supply that plugs into
a wall outlet. Next Advance will supply the
appropriate power supply for the local power and wall
outlet configuration.
Capacity
The Bullet Blender™
and
Bullet Blender™
Blue
can hold up to 24 microcentrifuge (1.5 to 2.0 mL) tubes.
The
Bullet Blender™
Blue 50 can hold up to 9 of the 50 mL BD Falcon™
brand polypropylene tubes. Other brands of 50 mL
tubes may not work due to differences in height or
diameter.
Use in
incubators/cold rooms
The Bullet Blender™ can operate
in incubators (up to 60°C)
or cold rooms (down to 4°C)
if the temperature is kept constant and the humidity is
not excessive. Temperature swings which cause
condensation will damage the electronics and void the
warranty. In fact, the electronic circuitry
includes additional heat sinks to ensure reliable
operation at elevated temperatures.
Warranty
The Bullet Blender™ comes with a
30 day money back guarantee and a 2 year warranty.
Accidents or condensation void the warranty. Next
Advance is not liable for any consequential damages.
How much
room does the Bullet Blender™ require?
The Bullet Blender™
is only 8 inches (20 cm) in diameter so it uses only 8
inches (20 cm) of lab bench.
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