Pressure cells are designed to pack/load microbore capillaries, such as polyimide coated fused silica. They can be used to pack columns and pre-columns (traps) with a slurry of beads or to load samples onto packed traps or columns. We routinely use 360 µm OD capillaries with 50-150 µm ID's to pack columns and traps with 3-5 µm beads of various chemistries (C18, SCX).

There are a couple of good movies at benchfly.com that show how it's done:

• Video: How to pull a capillary tip for LC/MS
• Video: How to pack a capillary column
• Video: How to Bomb-load Capillary Tips or Frits for LC/MS

The documents on this site are intended to help you setup your own packing station and pack/load columns. You can order the machined parts from emachineshop.com (or any other machine shop) or buy a pressure cell from one of the commercial sources (some of them are listed in the documents).

• Packing_Capillary_Columns.pdf
• LC-MS commonly used consumables (xls)
  
  
• UWPR_Pressure_Cell_for_packing_capillary_columns.pdf
• UWPR_Pressure_Cell_Material_List.xls

The files below are CAD drawings for the pressure cell body and lid.
Download the free CAD drawing software from http://www.emachineshop.com to view the files:

• UWPR_PressureCellLid.ems
• UWPR_PressureCellBody.ems

Here are some links to a commercially available pressure cells:

• The PV-3000, a compact vessel designed for packing capillary columns from ESI Source Solutions, they also sell the Dr.Maisch bulk packing materials.
  
  
• Next Advance offers several Capillary column packing kits.
  they also offer a kit to make your own frits Frit Kit and a full line of accessories to setup and maintain the pressure cell.
  
  
• Scientific Instrument Services or SIS is a distributer of the Next Advance Pressure Cell
  as well as the Frit Kit
  
  
• Here is the NANOBAUME Capillary Packing Unit from Westernfluidics.
  
  
• MS Wil sells several kits for out European friends like the NANOBAUME Capillary Packing Unit, and the CorSolutions Capillary Column Packer PV-1500 and PV-X3.
  
  
• As an alternative to pressure cells, check out the NANO LC COLUMN PACKING KITS from nanoLCMS.com using a pump to pack columns.
  
  
  

  Please send any feed back to priska @ uw.edu