Anyone familiar with UV-Visible spectrophotometers?

[Apoplexy]

I work in a quality control lab for a food processing company. I've been tasked with finding a good uv-vis spectrophotometer for $1000 - $1500, new not used. I've done some research and found a few candidates, but I'm wondering what the reputable brands are, and if it's realistic to find one of those brands making a uv-vis spectrophotometer in this price range. Thanks for your help.

 

[Turtle.Man]

Hi Apoplexy:

You're going to need to expand your budget a bit to get a brand new UV/Vis: you can't even buy a decent refurbished one for the sum you've quoted. Good brands are Perkin-Elmer (#1, but also top cost), Agilent, and Shimadzu. Thermo is worth a look, and possibly the cheapest, but I can't vouch for the performance (I'm not knocking them, I just have no experience with their products).

That said, I think you're going to need at least 10K even for an entry level dual- channel unit, and if you need a PDA detector you can double that figure. A high- end Perkin-Elmer unit with research grade optics, PDA detector, flow cell sipper pump will set you back the better part of 100K.

I have no idea what kind of throughput you require, but if you only have an occasional need to run a sample, consider using the services of a 3rd party analytical lab. It's not too expensive for UV/Vis, and you can frequently get your result the next business day.

 

[Gibsons]

Agree with Turtle, I'd be surprised if you can find anything close to working for 1k.

See if a nanodrop will suit your needs. They're about 12k though.

 

[Apoplexy]

Great, thanks for the response. I had a feeling that the budget was on the low side. A third party lab is a good idea -- I don't know what we need the spectrophotometer for but I can't imagine we would use it too much.

 

[cyclohexane]

Get a used nanodrop 1000

 

[Gibsons]

Get a used nanodrop 1000

Don't used ones still go for a few thousand?

Great machines though, way better than standard specs for almost everything I do.

 

[Knavish]

Late reply, but you can buy a good spectrophotometer or spectrometer from OceanOptics for much less than the big places like PerkinElmer or Thermo Fisher. There are tons of smaller companies that make good systems. I'm sure you can find a better system in terms of absolute performance (sensitivity, spectral resolution, throughput, etc) from a smaller company, or you can find a much cheaper system with reasonable performance from a smaller company.

If you just need a basic dispersive (non Fourier Transform) system, I think you are wasting your money with the big name companies. It's a bit like buying a computer directly from IBM back in the early 90's vs. from a place like Dell. IBM was the expensive name brand, but really had no quality advantage over clones -- you just had a lot of people buying IBMs because that is what they always bought and didn't know of other brands.

(FWIW I've worked in spectrometer / spectrophotometer design for several years.)
---edit---
Also, as I recall, the Nanodrop 1000 *USES* an Ocean Optics spectrometer internally. You pay a bunch extra to Nanodrop for the really cool integrated sample holder that allows it to grab / measure droplets.