Rainin Instrument, LLC

Rainin Instrument Co., Inc.

Beckman Instruments, Inc.

Mettler-toledo Rainin, LLC

William D Homberg

James S Petrek

Haakon T Magnussen

Kenneth Rainin

Christopher F Kelly

David J Lemieux

Andrew Vainshtein

Paul K Chadwick

Michael C Schmittdiel

Christian K Apple

Phillip Yee

Kent Gordon Moriarty

Thomas Allen Bell

Vintory L Blake Moore

Haakon T Magnujssen, Jr

Scott Macdonald

Blake Moore

A pipette home position locating mechanism and a manual pipette equipped with such a home position locating mechanism. The home position locating mechanism is spring-biased but compressible in a proximal-to-distal direction. The spring preload force of the home position locating mechanism is selected to be greater than force of exerted by a stroke spring of the pipette to which the home position locating mechanism is attached while the stroke spring is at its blowout position, but less than the combined force exerted by the stroke spring at its blowout position and a blowout spring of the pipette in its preload position.

Home position locating mechanism for manual pipette and manual pipette equipped with same

A handheld electronic pipette including several features aimed at improving ease of use, including a color dot matrix display, an intuitive thumb-operated two-axis controller, and multifunction soft buttons adjacent to the display. A simple and consistent user interface facilitates easy access to various modes of operation, including a manual pipetting mode and a remote mode.

Electronic pipette with two-axis controller

A volume adjustable pipette, comprising a plunger mounted for movement in a housing to and from a stop to aspirate a fluid into and dispense the fluid from a tip extending from the housing. The movement of the plunger is damped to reduce sudden plunger movements. An axially moveable volume setting member in the housing defines the stop and a volume setting for the pipette and is axially moveable by a user turnable volume setting member. Turning of the volume adjusting member also controls a coarse volume setting means and a fine volume setting means, the course volume setting means being responsive to a relatively small turning of the volume adjusting member for moving the volume setting member a relatively large axial distance and the fine volume setting means being responsive to a relatively large turning of the volume adjusting member for moving the volume setting member a relatively small axial distance.

Quick-set pipette with damped plunger

A hybrid manual-electronic pipette combines a manually driven piston with real-time electronic measurement of liquid volume and piston displacement while compensating for both pipette-specific and pipette model-specific variations. The hybrid nature of the pipette facilitates increased accuracy and improved ease of use, and enables additional functionalities not practicable with traditional manual pipettes.

Hybrid manual-electronic pipette

An ergonomic, manually precisely controllable return springless air displacement pipette relying upon the friction of a piston seal to maintain a plunger unit of the pipette in any axial location established by a user of the pipette.

Ergonomic return springless manual air displacement pipette

A volume adjustable manual pipette having a hand-holdable housing supporting (i) an electronic digital display and associated position sensing and control circuitry, (ii) a plunger unit and (iii) a quick set volume adjustment mechanism for simultaneously controlling the volume setting of the pipette and the electronic display, the quick set volume adjustment mechanism comprising a pipette volume setting member for limiting upward movement of the plunger unit within the housing to define the volume setting for the pipette and the volume setting member being supported for axial movement on the plunger unit and releasably secured relative to the housing by a pipette user operable locking mechanism. When released from the housing, the volume setting member is axially moveable on and with the plunger unit to quickly set the volume for the pipette. When secured to the housing, the plunger unit is axially moveable relative to the volume setting unit to aspirate and dispense the selected volume of liquid into and from a pipette tip extending from a lower end of the housing. The volume setting of the pipette is monitored by the sensing and control circuitry to provide a real time display of the volume setting of the pipette.

Volume adjustable manual pipette with quick set volume adjustment

A blowout springless manual air displacement pipette including a mechanical assist for generating a mechanical force opposing a return spring force on a plunger unit to aid a pipette user in locating and maintaining the plunger unit at a &ldquo;home&rdquo; position within a pipette body and ready for immersion of a pipette tip in a liquid to be drawn into the tip.

Blowout springless manual air displacement pipette with mechanical assist for aiding in locating and maintaining pipette plunger at a home position

An ergonomic, manually precisely controllable return springless air displacement pipette relying on the friction of a piston seal to maintain a plunger unit of the pipette in any axial location established by a user of the pipette.

A battery powered, microprocessor controlled portable electronic pipette, comprising a hand holdable housing supporting a battery, a linear actuator for driving a plunger lengthwise in a cylinder to aspirate and dispense fluid into and from a pipette tip extending from the housing and a control circuit for the linear actuator. The linear actuator is powered by the battery and comprises a stepper motor with current receiving windings for electromagnetically driving a rotor to impart the lengthwise movement to the plunger. The control circuit includes (i) a user controllable microprocessor powered by the battery and programmed to generate drive signals for the stepper motor, (ii) a display supported by the housing and electrically connected to the microprocessor, (iii) user actuateable control keys supported by the housing and electrically connected to the microprocessor for generating within the microprocessor pipette mode of operation, liquid pick up volume, liquid dispense, pipette speed of operation and pipette reset signals for controlling operation of the pipette and alpha-numeric user readable displays on the display, (iv) a memory having tables of data stored therein and accessible and useable by the microprocessor to control operations of the pipette, and (v) user actuateable switches supported by the housing for triggering pipette operations selected by user actuation of the control keys.

Battery powered microprocessor controlled hand portable electronic pipette

A refill pack for storing and dispensing pipette tips into an empty tip rack. The refill rack comprises a hand-gripable carrier for an array of pipette tips releasably secured relative to the carrier such that after hand positioning the array of tips on the empty tip rack, the carrier may be released from the tips which are then free to be seated on a lower end of a pipette and removed from the tip rack.

Refill pack for pipette tip racks

A volume adjustable pipette for aspirating and dispensing precise volumes of liquid comprising an elongated hollow hand-holdable housing supporting a plunger for turning and for axial movement within the housing the pipette including (i) an upper stop which is axially adjustable within the housing in response to a turning of the plunger to adjust the volume of liquid which may be drawn into a tip secured to a lower end of the housing upon upward axial movement of the plunger to the upper stop and (ii) a manually actuated lock mechanism for locking the plunger against rotation to set the volume adjustment for the pipette and comprising a hand-turnable knob for actuating and releasing the lock mechanism by virtue of two thumb and/or finger engageable wings extending outwardly from diametrically opposite sides of the hand-turnable knob a gripping member for fixedly securing the plunger against turning and being actuated by a turning of the hand-turnable knob to force a cam surface of the knob against a cam surface of the gripping member.

Adjustable volume pipette with improved volume adjustment lock mechanism

A manual pipette including a delayed action home position latch for engaging only after the plunger unit of the pipette has moved downward through its home position to thereafter releasably connect a moveable bottom stop member to the plunger unit to move therewith and upon an upward return of the plunger unit by the pipette's return spring to engage a home position stop to releasably lock the plunger unit in its home position without any downward force being exerted by the pipette user on the plunger unit.

Growing community of inventors

Oakland, CA, United States of America

William D Homberg