Coming up with a pipetting solution

Lab workers often ask me, "How did you come up with this?" Well, here is a précis of the diji (pipetting syringes) story that will probably get you thinking about that neat gizmo you have been meaning to develop since finding it impossible to open that packet of sauce last Christmas.

It is minus 5°C outside, and it is time to do the fifth titration for the day in a freezing steel cubicle within a steel fortress - that might blow up or sink any day of the week - on a North Sea oil rig, and you are thinking about finding another job. I was.

Now it is 3 pm, pitch black and freezing outside. I am dozing on my bunk, putting off my next titration and trying to dream up a product that will make me rich enough to buy the rig.

What about those pathetic pipette fillers that we are supposed to use but never do because they’re so irritating? How come we haven’t got some sort of syringe to use? If I just put a piston rod inside the pipette, wouldn’t that do the trick? A teflon seal would slide easily and be chemical-proof - and the piston rod can be long and bendy because the narrow pipette will support it. That would be easy!

Later, I am outside one of the UK‘s pipette makers and ‘the product’ is cosy in my new briefcase. The product is in fact a retrofit piston rod that fits into a pipette with the objective of eliminating pipette filler problems like leakage, tense handling, poor control of the meniscus, and glass stabbing injuries resulting from ‘pipette rage’ as users attempt to get their pipette filler to seal. I am a little apprehensive about being dismissed with condescending understanding when they see the product’s simplicity.

I finished my 10-minute demonstration, the production manager has called the marketing manager and some others, and a little crowd has gathered around the table enthusing. Excitedly the owner asks, "Can we take it to Pittcon next week and flash it around?" but I had been to see a patent agent!

A couple of months passed while the retiring owners headhunted a new managing director, and he now sits opposite me pouring scorn upon the prototype in his hands. Rudeness seems to be his forte and he is good at it. He handles ‘the product’ like it is going to pee on him at any second. He offhandedly deigns to take it to a couple of unis to see what they think of it. Embarrassed, the works manager guides me to the exit and I leave disappointed, consoling myself that I have probably had my first encounter with the ‘not invented here syndrome’.

It turned out for the best because here at the Imperial College of Science and Technology’s chemistry department, Dr Cenci is raving about how good my $9 product is because it has just outperformed her zillion-dollar titrator. My chaperone, the representative from ‘Europe’s biggest’ laboratory equipment distributor, stands by, impressed. Dr Cenci has to have some, now, and asks if we can we leave some samples, please.

The experience has been repeated at several locations and one day the fax starts chugging and I turn around to see that ‘EB’ has ordered 30,000 units.

Now things got tricky. How was I going to make 30,000 products with no money and no facilities? Eighteen months ensued while gadgets and small machines were designed and I endeavoured to develop techniques to produce the product on a large scale.

However, lack of sufficient investment conspired to cripple and eventually kill the project. ‘EB' were progressively very excited, apprehensive, disappointed and embarrassed. The consumer response to enquiry cards had been the best they had ever had, and now the project was in ruins and irate customers were on the phone.

I had a garage full of weird industrial plastics, machines that would puzzle Einstein, and a tarnished track record. Tail between my legs, I organised my return to Australia. I washed up on the shores of Queensland and sat under a palm tree thinking. I was still titrating in a steel box in the Bass Straight helping to pay for patent costs that seemed to fall due every payday and now amounted to about $90,000. The first embodiment of the invention (yes, I am now almost a patent lawyer) was supplied in sets of four, curled-up piston rods supplied in a plastic packet ready to fit to your pipette. But I realised that laboratory workers aren’t wedded to their pipettes - so why make a product to fit existing pipettes that are seen as a consumable item? Why not make a proper ‘tool for the job’ including a pipette section that can be replaced when needed?

Now things got trickier. I needed a custom-made pipette. So my new partner and I embarked on a project to make our own pipettes. We devised a machine under my Queenslander as the bush turkeys wandered through the open-sided workshop chuckling at us. The meniscus was replaced with a fine red line - and hey presto, parallax error when reading pipettes was consigned to the past. We became glassworkers, screen printers, machinists, calibrators and a host of other things.

What to do now? Here I feel compelled to make an exclamation - ‘God bless the internet!’

The technical details of bringing an invention to market are usually the most interesting to tell, but the greatest challenges faced by inventors are the commercial factors. Manufacturers showed disinterest in our new products. The only thing keeping us going was the great feedback we were getting from customers - pathologists replacing $550 pipettors with $25 dijis - schools winning titrating contests and exclaiming “they were the best things we have ever bought”.

Agonisingly slowly, things have turned around. I remember what a gruff reception I sensed down the phone when approaching the chemistry department of Australia’s leading university (OK, I’m biased). They tested and probed and prodded for six months. Then they threw out their hassles and converted with glee. They love me. I love them. Another big university saw the light. The Japanese came and barbequed Aussie style and imported. And next year we are going to take over America.

So the answer to the initial question, "How did you come up with this?", is - by being optimistic and tenacious to a fault, and befriending the internet, which allows direct communication between the developer and the end user and removes many of the barriers to product development that exist in commercial supply chains.