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In this section, you will find information about technical constructions and inventions I was involved in.

Filter Cutter

filter-cutter

Many types of experiments with liquid samples involve filtration onto polycarbonate filters, and often, those have to be cut in pieces afterwards. The manual cutting of filters by hand with razor-blades and tweezers is laborious and can consume a significant part of the sample preparation time.

In order to simplify and optimize this process, a filter-cutter machine was designed and manufactured in cooperation with Wiederkehr Metallbau AG, Boswil, Switzerland. The filter-cutter consists of a toggle lever press system and a cutting device. The cutting device can be equipped with up to 20 standard razor blades to cut a circular filter in 20 segments. A gauge helps to align the centre of the filter with the centre of the cutting device. Importantly, the whole filter is not totally cut into segments: a few millimetres in the centre of the circle remain uncut, so all pieces are still attached to each other at the tip and thus cannot flip. The razor blades can be easily removed one by one to generate fewer and larger segments, according to the user’s demands. The filter-cutter handles standard polycarbonate membrane filters with diameters of 25 mm to 47 mm.

With this new machine, a 47 mm PC filter can be cut into 20 equal pieces in a few seconds. The machine is robust and easy to use. The application of standard razor blades that can be easily replaced leads to low maintenance costs.

Do you want to have your own filter-cutter in your lab? icon save file Contact me for sales information.

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