UWPR Pressure Cell
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:
Here are some links to a commercially available pressure cells:
- ESI Source Solutions sells a lot of useful LC-MS consumables, including the Dr.Maisch bulk packing materials.
- Next Advance offers several Capillary column packing kits.
they also offer a kit to make your own frits the Frit Kit (also available from FisherSci) 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
- As an alternative to packing your own columns there are various commercially available options out there. Note some columns will require a separate spray tip.
ESI Source Solutions sells columns from ionopticks, Bruker, PremierLCMS etc