Bio-Rad fixes our NGC

Wed, 20 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

UPDATE (situation Dec. 21st, 2024)

We just survived our protein purification course (DPDR-305, see also my other blog posts related to teaching . After having done about 25 runs with the “repaired” Bio-Rad NGC, I sadly have to conclude that the most significant issue remains: that the FPLC becomes unresponsive to commands issued manually. Also, the randomness of these disconnects persisted. Only one student group had problems, but we had several incidents during that single day. That, sadly, concludes our short stint into Bio-Rad territory for protein purification. All of this indicates that any further investments into this device will be wasted time and money. We have neither too much time nor too much money. If Bio-Rad wants to do anything from their own initiative, I am happy to let them do whatever it takes to get the machine into a usable state, but we won’t actively pursue any further actions.The best way to keep your FPLC device in good shape is to have a maintenance contract. Although we have been able to get money from our university to buy a top-of-the-line FPLC twice in the last 30 years, getting money for a service contract is much more difficult. One of the many reasons is that most grant periods are shorter than service contracts, which only make sense if you make them over several years.

Firmware Upgrade on Michael’s Domain

Bio-Rad fixes our NGC