Whitley A45 Workstation by Don Whitley Scientific

"An impressive instrument, maintains and monitors temperature, humidity and anaerobic conditions extremely well. I often carry out plating of anaerobic cultures, using the cabinet allows me to deoxygenate plates before use and then incubate in a temperature controlled environment that surrounds the plates with the required anaerobic atmosphere. Using a workstation over gas jars gives the added benefit of an increased availability of space (jars are bulky to store in incubators) and the option of checking/counting plates part way through the incubation time without exposing them to normal atmosphere - something you can't do with jars. The workstation also offers the ability to inoculate anaerobic broths using normal pipetting and eliminating the need to use needles and bungs (thus removing that risk of injury) - speeding the job up and making it safer to. Broths can then be incubated normally with the anaerobic conditions remaining intact. The cabinet is very easy to use via the port holes, with a side chamber for transferring items in and out whilst minimally impacting the anaerobic internally. The cabinet also has excellent monitoring systems, constantly recording readings for temperature and oxygen levels in addition to catalyst performance and where necessary alarming to notify of excursions. This information can be downloaded (at least monthly) to record these readings, which is useful to tie in with records associated with testing or projects. The newer cabinets offer additional configurations where there are instant access portholes, letterbox access points for putting single small items in to different types of access portholes where larger quantities of items can be placed inside or removed without using the transfer chamber. This instrument has made my job easier and offered benefits in use that jars never could."