Re: Biogenex Optimax User Question

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From:Amos Brooks <atbrooks@snet.net> (by way of Marvin Hanna)
To:histonet@histosearch.com
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Hi,
    We demoed this stainer too, and in spite of the fact that we are in the
market
for an an automated stainer, we found it to be counter productive.
    This product comes with a hefty price tag. So one would expect it to
save money
in the form of either tech time or faster results. Suffice to say it DIDN'T. We
started several stains (PAS, AFB, Retic, etc) on this stainer at 7:00 one
morning
then started the same stains (for side by side comparisons) at at 8:00 by
hand. We
finished the hand stains by 10:00 with usual results. The automatic stainer
took
until 1:00 in the afternoon to complete, and most of the Retic sections
fell off the
slides on the automatic stainer (bone marrows are such a pain sometimes).
Obviously
no rapid results savings.
    The tech time it saved was gobbled up by the cost of the ancillary products
required for the machine (dispensers, product specific reagents etc.). The
worst
part of it was that we were looking for a product which we could batch our bulk
stains such as AB/PAS which is often over 100 slides at a time. This
machine doubles
the time taken to hand stain the same stain while only doing about 50
slides in a
batch.
    I would advise searching the market carefully before committing
yourself to this
automatic stainer. Shandon and Leica both have great automatic stainers.
Still, for
many stains you still cant beat the old fashioned hand stains.
Amos Brooks




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