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NMR tubes

We have recently seen some researchers producing poor data by using cheap, unlabeled NMR tubes. I am therefore reposting our instructions regarding the use of NMR tubes here:

The only way to obtain useful data is to have well prepared samples in high quality nmr tubes. Do not buy nmr tubes in bulk packets that do not have labels specifying what they are. You will not know the quality of these tubes. At the minimum you will get poor results and the worst they will damage the nmr instruments There are many grades of nmr tubes. Below is a list of nmr tubes that we found to work well for our instruments Quality nmr tubes from other vendors might work as well; we are happy to help testing these tubes.

 For instruments of 500 MHz and less.

Norell (nmrtubes.com)  507-HP-7 (these are sold in the VWR stockroom)

Wilmad (willmad-labglass.com) 527-PP-7

New Era (https://newera-spectro.com) NE-HP5

For instruments of 700 MHz and 800 MHz you can use the tubes above but you will get better results from tubes that are specified for those field strengths.

when to wear gloves?

I see a lot of people wearing laboratory gloves while typing on the keyboard operating the NMR spectrometer.

This appears to be a good thing – why not be super-careful and wear gloves routinely in a lab environment or when touching something which comes out of a lab environement?

But keep in mind – while you protect yourself you might also be transferring toxic residues to places, which are touched by other people, for instance a computer keyboard.

Therefore, pls do not wear gloves while operating the NMR console. If you feel that you have to wear gloves (for instance due to an allergy), please change to a fresh pair prior to typing on the keyboard.

Topspin command “serial”

I have often run into the scenario that I am comparing a series of NMR spectra, which all need to be processed exactly the same way. Changing one processing parameter – for instance the line broadening “lb” – will then require reprocessing of all spectra.

This tedious task can easily be automated using the little known topspin-command “serial”. This command opens a menu, where you specify the list of spectra of interest (i) and define a command or au program for the processing (ii).

Welcome to Professor McShan

Welcome to Andrew McShan, new Assistant Professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Georgia Tech. Andrew is expert in protein NMR and they have already started setting up a library of NMR experiments for the characterization of proteins on our 800 MHz instrument. This library will become available to all of our users.

Pls check Andrew’s new website at: http://mcshanlab.com/