Tissue Chopper

This apparatus has been designed to prepare pieces of tissue for metabolic experiments and is especially suitable for small and irregular specimens available at biopsy or from small organs. It causes much less disturbance to cell structure than homogenisers or blenders and is applicable to fragments that would be difficult or impossible to cut by ordinary methods. Typical applications are to liver, kidney and various parts of the central nervous system.

Slices up to 1 mm thick and cubes or prisms up to 1 mm cross section can be prepared with the chopper in 30 seconds. Provision is made for stepless variation of slice thickness by means of a micrometer head calibrated in microns.

The action of the machine is as follows: a circular stainless steel table, on which the specimen is placed, is traversed automatically from left to right of the machine. At the same time, a chopping arm carrying a blade is raised and dropped rapidly by an adjustable force and the tissue is chopped into the required slices. If prisms are required, the table is returned to the left hand side of the machine, turned by 45°, and the process is repeated. Cubes are formed by rotating the table by 90°. The cutting speed can be varied from zero to over 200 strokes per minute. The Tissue Chopper has a safety limit switch to prevent the machine overrunning and a quick release mechanism for the return of the table.