SPI Supplies® Brand Diamond Knives for Ultramicrotomy
Why pay more for the same quality elsewhere
Introduction to the SPI Supplies® Brand of Diamond Knives for Ultramicrotomy
The diamond knives purchased in life science as well as materials science
laboratories are among the more expensive items purchased by microscopy
laboratories today. Although in real terms the actual price over the past
ten years has declined, in part due to increased competition but also due to
the declining price on the world market of the starting diamonds, diamond
knives on most people's standards are still expensive. Our interest is to
make sure our customers don't over pay for their knives.
The SPI Supplies Diamond Knives are made in the USA, taking advantage of
unique proprietary technology that was grown in the USA and not in Europe.
It is often-times forgotten that the world's first commercial diamond knife
manufacturer was DuPont in Wilmington, DE and the technology developed in
Europe at some considerable time after that. Many years have passed since
DuPont got out of the diamond knife business but the purely USA-developed
technology over the years has been refined and improved so that it is now
possible to produce a diamond knife of the same standard as knives
manufactured in Europe but for much lower pricing.
What about the quality?
There are a lot of misunderstandings if not outright false beliefs about
"quality" of a diamond knife. First and most important, not only are the
diamonds selected for knife use of "gem quality", but if you think about it,
it really does not make sense to use anything less than gem quality (e.g.
free of inclusions and defects) because if the diamond was not of this
quality, it would never be possible to polish down to a point where the edge
would be completely free of fine striations.
Where differences can occur is in the polishing which also, is where most of
the value is added in the manufacturing. Remember that diamond if a
naturally made material, and the physical characteristics of the natural
diamond don't change depending on where the knife is polished. But what
does vary is the polishing process to get the "perfect" edge and that is
where the USA technology gains the advantage over the foreign technology.
What about pricing?
The production technology used in the USA is inherently a lower cost process
to get to the same end result. But when the US dollar relative to the euro
and the Swiss Franc is low, there is a further pricing advantage due solely
to exchange rate changes. Presently, the pricing advantages of the SPI
Supplies diamond knives are considerable and many of the world's leading
laboratories and researchers are recognizing that fact and are taking
advantage of the lower costs offered by the SPI diamond knives.
What if I am not happy with my SPI Supplies Brand diamond knife?
If we said we never had any returns, that would be an untrue statement.
But such returns are really few and far between. And when a customer is
unhappy with their knife, since SPI unconditionally guarantees customer
satisfaction with anything purchased from SPI Supplies, we will either
replace the knife or knives altogether or refund any money already paid. We
believe we are delivering real value to our customers with the SPI Supplies
diamond knives but we want to always make sure that we at all times do it so
that we also have happy customers.
Resharpening service:
The SPI Supplies Brand of diamond knives can be resharpened indefinitely,
and there is no upper limit to how many times we will resharpen your knives.
This is particularly important for materials science researchers, some of
whom can wear out their diamond knives 10-20 times faster than their life
science counterparts.
Recycling service:
SPI Supplies is operating as a "green" company. It is very well known that
SPI has not published a printed catalog since 1990, and by 1994, we were
committed to becoming a "paperless" company, once we realized how many trees
had to be cut down to print that last paper catalog. We extend our green
philosophy to virtually all aspects of our activities including recycling
programs to recycle just about anything that can be recycled. We know that
for many laboratories, the cost of returning a knife for resharpening from
outside the USA can easily eat up the cost savings that would be realized
relative to the cost of purchase of a new knife. We have been in any number
of government or corporate laboratories where the bureaucracy surrounding
the shipping of anything back to a vendor becomes enormous. So "spent"
diamond knives keep piling up in a drawer somewhere. Note that for every
lot of ten such knives returned to SPI Supplies, we will resharpen the one
with the smallest edge and return it to our customer,
shipping/handling/insurance prepaid, absolutely free and at no cost
whatsoever to our customer. Naturally, we will end up with nine knives that
we can resharpen and offer as reconditioned knives. But the important point
is that we are recycling a nonrenewable resource for future use by others,
and keeping the diamonds in the knives in the normal flow of commerce.
We hope this brief background will be interesting to you as well as helpful
when you make those decisions pertaining to the purchase of your next
diamond knives.
SPI Diamond Knife Products for EM
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Thursday March 18, 2010
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