EEVblog 1528 - I found a bin FULL of Dumpster Bio Lab Devices!

A wheelie bin full of Biolab devices found in the dumpster!

4D Nucleofector

00:00 - A wheelie bin full of medical bio lab devices!
00:48 - Lucetta Luminometer
02:13 - Nucleofector device
03:33 - A webcam thingy
03:54 - Lonza Flashgel 300V Power Supply
04:26 - Lonza 4D Nucleofector Core Unit
05:19 - Is this a Nanoraptor creation?
06:43 - A literal bag of LOL's
07:02 - Lux2 CytoSmart device
09:24 - Endosafe PTS
10:07 - More stuff!
10:17 - MycoAlert Mycoplasma Detection Kit
11:12 - Peristaltic pump

Other channels:

#ElectronicsCreators #dumpsterdiving #Medical

[SeanBZA]

Peristaltic pumps, useful to pump precise quantities of liquid. You could make the world's most precise flux dispenser, and finally be able to accurately dispense a Rossman of flux every time repeatedly, so you can never be underfluxing any joint.

[bigclivedotcom]

Good haul. Those precision peristaltic pumps look great. Many uses.

[WizardTim]

I fail to understand how thousands of dollars worth of barely used equipment ends up in a dumpster like this. The company paid good money for all that, then decided they didn't want it anymore, I can maybe understand if the company decided they only needed to run a couple tests before it paid for itself and it simply wasn't worth the time and effort to try to sell them and get some money back but the employee who put them in the dumpster could have just put it all in the boot of their car and sold it themselves which is what I really don't understand, even if you just put in the minimum effort and took it to Cashies on the way home they might give you a couple notes for it all, easily pay for a nice restaurant dinner at the very least.

And it isn't even like you have some special e-waste dumpster either right? It's just a general waste dumpster destine for landfill? It's no wonder RoHS and similar regulations are getting more and more strict with waste streams like this.

[TheAlastairBrown]

That Amorex one uses massive shocks to disrupt cell membranes and allow the uptake of foreign material - for instance you could take bacterial cells and zap them to accept pieces of DNA to want them to express. Also known as an electroporator.

[razpootis]

I'm jealous that you found a bag of plushies. What kind of monster would just toss those out. 😞

[jonathanrd]

The webcam is used for imaging agarose gels containing DNA samples. Typically the gels are placed on a UV light source for imaging. A fluorescent stain (such as ethidium bromide or Sybr safe) in the gel binds to bands of DNA and fluoresces.

[ecospider]

Back in the day working in a data center we would throw all kinds of stuff away because paying people to sort what might be valuable rarely was profitable. But there was a couple employees that would take boxes a sort it on their own time. The 40 pin scsi cables were always a score because the used shops would buy them for $40.

[KeanM]

The peristaltic pump unit has many uses for dispensing or liquid transfer and is probably worth keeping around. The other gear is likely going to contain quite interesting optical components to play with, but probably otherwise pretty useless and proprietary.
I don't have anything to do with designing medical devices, but I do design the occasional prototype scientific device using things like spectrometers, cuvette holders, various optics, and Rapsberry Pi's (when I can source them).

[NoLandMandi]

I would pair the pumps with an Arduino and 2 soil sensors and make a lovely 2 channel poted-plant automatic irrigation machine!😁

[einfelder]

The way those boxes are taped up makes me think they were warranty returns. Left on the shelf for years and finally thrown out.

[NivagSwerdna]

I read the nucleofector product page and I still have no idea what it does... my suspicion is that if you wanted to create a virus that destroyed humanity it might be a good start.

[IanScottJohnston]

Amazing stuff and appears worth a penny or only guess somebody in your building misread "dumpster room" as "valuables storage".

[wmitchell]

The CytoSMART is pretty much just a camera and light, but you can put it inside a cell culture incubator and it will take pictures on a schedule as your cells grow.

This means you could take a photo every 5 minutes for 48 hours for example, so you can see cell growth at great time resolution without constantly taking your cells out. Normally this wouldn't be possible, as taking cells out of the incubator over to a microscope this frequently would damage them due to movement, temperature and gassing changes and would mess up your experiments .

Trying to stay awake to image cells regularly for 48 hours also isn't practical, although I've seen this attempted in PhD labs! If you ever see a paper with about 30 hours of hourly imaging, that's because it's the limit of human endurance for this kind of experiment.

[roberthousedorfii]

that last bit is good for controlled pumping of water to plants, chems to an aquarium, or mixing drinks, etc.

[msylvain]

You know it is going to be good when you take the whole dumpster with you instead of just picking it in 😎

[WaynesWorld]

I always wonder how much of the dumpster finds are left there on purpose to watch Dave salivate, or even get a free repair and return to owner lol

[Mlako]

In the Czech Republic, you could start a new cell biology lab with all of this gear. Definitely donate it to some science faculty at a university. The instruments are all older models that are no longer sold but you can still buy kits for the Nucleofector, new gels for the FlashGel system and the Cytosmart microscope is also completely viable. It has a little crappy camera, the newer models have better lens and resolution but for some student projects it's still a great tool!

[makgyver]

I expect that a lab in a hospital/ university in a not so well off part of the world would really appreciate those things. Maybe they could be donated?
They may have been dumped due to regulations regarding routine calibration or servicing or a change in system provider.

[McTroyd]

If you're able to do a non-destructive teardown for your video, it might be worth looking at nearby universities to see if anyone has a biolab that could use them. In the US, you could then deduct much of that value off your taxes if you donate it. I assume Australia has something similar. It also keeps that equipment out of the landfill.

[Ascania]

Re: The luminometer. It is actually quite a simple device. The sample you put in emits some light (wavelength, amount etc. of course depend on the specific chemical processes induced) and the luminometer holds it in a completely dark environment and measures the amount of light emitted.