Overpriced Lab Shakers

07 Aug 2017

While I was an undergrad, one of my research projects dealt with scorpion fluorescence. One of my tasks was to extract the fluorophores from the cuticle. I won’t go into any details about the protocol, but I ended up with ground up scorpion cuticle in ethanol. At this point we were wanting to stir our scorpion slurry so that all the bits and pieces would be exposed to the ethanol so that our fluorophores could dissolve. Unfortunately, we were borrowing lab space for our project and did not have access to a lab shaker. We did have a small budget to work with so I looked up lab shakers online. As soon as I saw the prices, ranging from several hundred to several thousand dollars, I knew there had to be a cheaper way to keep my samples stirring.

A lab shaker in its most basic form is a platform that rocks back and forth. There are some variations on this idea such as orbital shakers, and you can also get shakers with fancy speed and temperature controls, but for our purposes we just needed a rocking platform. Why such a device would cost so much is beyond me. My best guess is that when researchers are buying equipment, they are usually sitting on a pile of money (which actually probably isn’t enough money to be called a ‘pile’) in the form of start-up funds or a grant. A lab shaker is one of those ubiquitous pieces of lab equipment that you just need to get, and when you look at the price of a lab shaker in the context of a grant, it doesn’t seem quite as expensive. I really don’t think lab shakers should be that expensive, but they are. My solution to the problem was to make one myself.

While I didn’t really document what I did, the following video provides an overview of how my lab shaker turned out.

The best part of my lab shaker? I built it using trash and parts I already had. Essentially it would turn the CD drive motor on for a short amount of time to push the tray out and then the rubber band would pull the CD tray back down. It’s not elegant and I had to change out the rubber band every so often, but it worked.

If you are interested in making your own lab shaker, there are some instructions on Instructables for a shaker similar to mine that goes back and forth using a CD drive. If you are feeling fancy, you can build your own orbital shaker, but that will cost a bit more.

Lab equipment tends to be quite expensive, and some of it rightfully so, but general purpose lab shakers should not be as expensive as they are.