My lab is moving, and we’re going to replace the incubators and boxes we have now (which will be left behind for the other labs we currently share space with). Right now, we’ve got absolutely perfect boxes: old rubbermaid “shoe boxes”, which hold 14 stacks of 60 mM plates in a nice hexagonal pack. These boxes, in turn, fit three across in a standard incubator, and stack quite nicely. Unfortunately, they’ve been discontinued for a long time, so we can’t simply buy more. And we’ve looked at currently available plastic “shoe boxes” from all sorts of places, and none are as good. Some are the right dimensions, but don’t survive a trip through the dishwasher. Almost all these days have annoying curves or slanted walls or non-flat bottoms, and none are nearly as good as our old boxes. Other boxes we’ve looked at don’t fit very optimally in an incubator – some might be 40 % of the width of a shelf, or 70% of the depth, etc. We’re currently trying to look at food service bins, but again nothing is quite right.
What sorts of boxes does the rest of the world use to store their plates? Please don’t tell me we have to settle for less than optimal!
Several years ago, the lab I did my graduate work in switched to shoe boxes from The Container Store (item #10007943) - they’re slightly wider than the old Sterlite boxes we used, but the boxes still fit three across in our 20°C incubators, and have survived multiple rounds of washing. A case of 20 boxes goes for about $26. The Container Store’s website: http://www.containerstore.com/
I do not know if these would survive a trip through dishwasher (we rinse ours out with bleach/etoh by hand), but these have flat bottoms and fit 3 across in our incubator. They are from Office Depot, are $7.99 for a pack of 4 (unless your institution has a contract with Office Depot), and are made in the USA! Here’s a link http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/420346/Office-Depot-Brand-Clear-Plastic-Storage/
Our lab uses boxes from the Container store as well. The “Tell Fresh” boxes work well for storing 60 mm plates in different configurations and have survived frequent trips through the dishwasher. I can give you more details if you want.
We also like the $1 small clear boxes sold at home depot. They are so cheap you can buy tons and organize each one of your projects in a different box. Then they all stack together.
Here’s a link