GB886795A - Apparatus for aseptically pouring a bacteriological substrate or the like into cover-carrying vessels, for instance petri cups - Google Patents

Abstract

886,795. Aseptically filling Petri cups. SILVERSTOLPE, K. O. L. Oct. 11, 1960, No. 34781/60. Class 14 (2). An apparatus for aseptically pouring a bacteriological substrate such as nutrient agar into cover-carrying vessels, for instance Petri cups, includes a sterile chamber through which the vessels are passed by a conveyer, a spout for discharging substrate opening into the sterile chamber and having disposed adjacent to it a cam member which is engaged by the edge of the covers of the vessels as these are conveyed through the chamber, causing the covers to be raised enabling the spout end to protrude above the interior of the vessel so as, upon a dosage device being actuated, to allow a metered quantity of substrate to flow into the vessel, after which the covers automatically return to their closed position on the vessels. In a preferred embodiment, Petri cups are fed off a rotary disc 20 into a star-shaped rotary conveyer 16 within a chamber 13 maintained sterile by ultra-violet lamps; as the cups move past a filling spout 12, an arcuate cam 23 lifts the lids 25 of the cups. Substrate contained in a stainless steel vessel 4 provided with an agitator, a bacteriological air-filter and a surrounding temperature-controlled water bath 2, is drawn by a syphon system 7 to a rubber supply hose 11 and delivery of the substrate to the cups is made in synchronism with the rotary conveyer by a dosage device which consists of a plunger 14 adapted, by being moved towards an abutment member 15 by a spring and away from it by an electromagnet against the action of the spring, to squeeze flat or to open, respectively, the rubber hose 11. Alternatively, a straight conveyer may be used instead of the rotary conveyer 16 and disc 20.