Automated colony counters?

Hi All.

Has anyone ever had any experience with automated colony counters for microbiology plate reading? If so, are they any good? Is there any interference with residual food particles? Are they good at clump differentiation? The 'idea' sounds great and could save a lot of plate reading time, but are they really that good???

I'm trying to research automated colony counters but am struggling to find reviews, can find plenty promo information though, but it's the 'real life' experiences I'm looking for.

If anyone has any comments on issues found or good points, even, I'd be very grateful.

Thanks in advance!

Pops

We use a 3M colony counter occasionally and have seen that it works really good. The only problem we have is when we use it on dark colored product then it doest work that good. I would suggest that you get a demo unit and try it before you purchase the unit.

Hi All.

Has anyone ever had any experience with automated colony counters for microbiology plate reading? If so, are they any good? Is there any interference with residual food particles? Are they good at clump differentiation? The 'idea' sounds great and could save a lot of plate reading time, but are they really that good???

I'm trying to research automated colony counters but am struggling to find reviews, can find plenty promo information though, but it's the 'real life' experiences I'm looking for.

If anyone has any comments on issues found or good points, even, I'd be very grateful.

Thanks in advance!

Pops

Yes the usual interference that you will encounter are food particles and color. you can avoid this by filtering your sample using a filtered whir-pak bag of some sort. We use the TEMPO and we had to do extensive validation because we ran into color issues and particles interfering with the sample.