How Union Scientific’s Vibratory Mixing is Different

Because our shakers contain no rubbing or wearing parts, we have not had a single return for service of these shakers during the past 12 years they have been sold.

Vortexing of multiple small volumes of liquids:
Ordinary motor driven vortexers will not create a mixing vortex within a microplate well or vial unless the orbit generated is smaller in diameter than the inside diameter of each well or vial ( download our scientific paper on this subject from our web site ).

Almost all single vortexers can only shake one vial at a time by using a motor driven eccentric platform. When attempting to process multi-well microplates with small well volumes, an adapter required to hold more than 4 plates requires the alignment of multiple eccentrics within the shaker does not allow very small orbits. Mechanical wear is also a recurring problem.

The USC Vibratornado consists of two sets of high endurance leaf springs supporting a pair of shaking platforms that are driven magnetically at 90 degrees to each other. Further, the driving magnets are powered at 90 degrees out of phase with each other causing the sample platform to move in a modified circle. The diameter of this circle can be adjusted remotely and continuously by merely turning a potentiometer dial. An orbit of less than one half millimeter is easily achieved, and will generate a vortex inside the liquid filled wells of a 1536 microplate! A standard machine will vortex 18 such plates at once, providing a throughput of 27,648 samples at one time. ( Download our scientific paper on “creating a vortex” from our web site.) There are no wearing or rubbing parts in these machines, hence no wear.

USC Vertical Shakers:
Mixing within deep well plates or small diameter vials is very difficult and requires an understanding of the physics involved in causing fluid motion in long narrow tubes. ( Download our scientific paper)

The USC Vibroturbulator machines are high throughput vertical shakers that will rapidly mix the contents of wells in deep microplates or in long narrow tubes and vials. Liquids of differing specific gravities may be blended as well as powders rapidly dispersed in these deep tubes. No other shaker offers the high acceleration forces needed for this application. These high acceleration forces are the result of several high endurance leaf springs mounted horizontally attached to a magnetically driven armature at 50 or 60 cycles per second. There are no rubbing or wearing parts which results in very long life.

Our standard models will mix the contents of 8 deep well plates in a matter of seconds.
Using 96 well plates provides 768 sample at once. Using 384 well plates yields 3072 samples at one time!

USC Horizontal Shakers
The USC horizontal Vibratranslator are high throughput machines primarily used for growing cells and other gentle agitation applications. Many other mechanically driven horizontal shakers operate at low speeds with relatively long strokes which limits their usefulness in agitating the contents of small microplate wells. As in other USC shakers the sample platform is supported on high endurance leaf springs which are driven electromagnetically at high frequency. There are no rubbing or wearing parts which results in very long life. Our larger standard shakers will hold three stacks of approx. 25 microplates each. Using 96 well shallow plates allows 7,200 samples to be processed at once. Using 384 well plates provides 28,800 samples at one time!

About ten years ago, eight of our model #9755 horizontal shakers were employed in the sequencing of the human genome. These machines ran 24 hours per day continually for two years inside incubators without a single failure.