EDP3-Plus Pipettes From Rainin

Anyone who does a lot of molecular biology has also done A LOT of pipetting. PCR, cloning, assays, etc. inevitably require pipetting small amounts of reagents into small tubes. Extended hours of pipetting can often lead to pain in the wrist and thumb (I can attest to this from personal experience), repetitive stress syndrome, tendinitis and carpal tunnel syndrome. Repetition and the force required to pipette and eject tips are two of the biggest problems with pipetting long hours and multiple volumes. Rainin has invested a lot of time in researching ergonomics and ways to relieve pressure on the wrists, forearms and thumbs. As a result, they have come out with a line of LTS pipettes and electronic pipettes.

The EDP3-Plus electronic pipette claims to eliminate almost all plunger forces required by the user, with 95% less force required for the LTS version. LTS pipettes use a Lite Touch Pipette Ejection System that utilizes a shaft and tip ejection system with a closed seal and positive-stop. This reduces tip insertion, ejection and plunger forces. The EDP3-Plus electronic pipette comes with or without an LTS shaft. Already having a set of manual LTS pipettes (which have greatly reduced the stress on my wrists and thumb) it made the most sense for me to have the LTS electronic pipette as well. However, I don’t think the LTS tips are as necessary for the electronic pipette as the manual pipettes, as the stress on the wrist and hand is already relieved by the side buttons and minimal tip ejections. The pipettes are available in 10 different pipetting volumes. I personally have the 0.5-10 µl and 100-1000 µl versions. They are both very accurate to small pipetting volumes and seal very well with the pipette tips. I use my 1000 µl pipette for 50 µl volumes with great accuracy and reproducibility.

EDP3-Plus pipettes come with a lot of different functions. The best is the multiple pipetting mode, in which a volume can be aspirated in large volume and pipetted out in a set volume at various speeds multiple times. This makes setting up multiple PCR reactions fast and easy. The pipette can also work as a manual pipette with the front trigger buttons replacing the up and down motion with the thumb. The six modes are pipet, multidispense, dilute, titrate, GLP and manual. In the year I’ve had the pipette I have yet to find a use for the dilute, titrate or GLP modes (or at least I haven’t taken the time to figure them out). Other functions include speed adjustment, mixing by holding down the button, sound and volume control, preset sequential pipetting volumes, a cycle counter, and adjustable time intervals for automatic aliquot dispensing (my favorite function). Mostly, I use the multidispense mode for setting up reactions, adding buffers, preparing multiple samples, etc. I occasionally use the standard pipet mode but often prefer to use my manual LTS pipettes as I have more control over pipetting speed. Overall, the functions are pretty easy to use and switch between various modes.

I guess the downfalls would be the time required to set the volume, as scrolling up and down is usually required. However, holding down the button increases the speed incrementally of the scroll. The volume is also not always accurate and sometimes excessive force is used to aspirate, causing spillage of samples. Overall, I have had great experience with this pipette. It has HUGELY reduced the stress on my wrist and forearm, increased the speed of setting up my reactions, and I can’t imagine life in the lab without it!