Dear Macky,
Why using any frame? We have switched to casting our gels without any frame
at all. The plates are kept together with stainless steel clamps (4-5 on
each side), the gel is poured in with a 50 ml plastic syringe and after
polymerization the plates are transferred into the cassette. It works
perfectly. We switched to this protocol because we had some trouble with
buffer leakage from the upper chamber which we could avoid using this
procedure. Once the gel is polymerized you wont have to worry about the
tension of the springs because the gel will be tight anyway. Another
advantage is that you are able to remove bubbles in the gel after the
casting (as long as the gel is liquid) by removing some of the clamps and
carefully going in between the plates with are razorblade or something
comparable. When you start to turn the blade, the gel contracts and the
bubbles disappear. On turning back the blade, the gel expands again and
fills the space between the plates.
Yours sincerely,
Marcus Macht
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Dr. Marcus Macht
ZMMK-Servicelabor
Joseph-Stelzmann-Str. 52
50931 Koeln
Tel.: +49 221 478-6995
Fax: +49 221 478-6977
e-mail: Marcus.Macht@uni-koeln.de
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