McIllwain Tissue Chopper

The McIlwain™ Tissue Chopper is a proven instrument for rapidly sectioning living or fixed tissue without freezing or embedding to harden the tissue. It cuts living tissue into slices, cubes, arterial rings, etc. with a minimum of functional disturbance. These preparations can be used in studies of metabolism or for electrophysiology. The McIlwain™ Tissue Chopper may also be used to cube fixed tissue for araldite embedding and EM.

The specimen is affixed to filter paper or plastic discs (51354) and clipped to the instrument's stainless steel table top (cyanoacrylate adhesive may be used to hold tissue pieces in otherwise unstable positions.)

The table moves at a pre-set speed. As it moves, a chopping arm is raised automatically, and chops down at frequencies from zero to 200 strokes per minute. A pre-set stop prevents the attached blade from penetrating the filter paper and impacting the instrument's stainless steel table. In this way, serial sections of live tissue from 0-1 mm thickness may be cut rapidly. The thickness is pre-set with a micrometer graduated in 1 micron and 25 micron increments. After sectioning in one plane, the instrument's table may be rotated any number of degrees, and the process repeated, to obtain cubes or prisms.

Includes two blades.

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