Guide to Buying Laboratory Equipment for School Labs

Building or thinking about a new laboratory for your school, institute, or personal use? Since labs don’t fall under any regular or standardized category, figuring one out is rather difficult. But don’t worry! Here we are with a minty-fresh lab equipment buying guide from Labkafe. This article will help you ascertain what lab equipment you need, how much of them do you need, and where to buy lab equipment.

There are always two parts of any laboratory ‒ lab furniture and lab equipment. We have covered  how to buy lab furniture for school labs previously, and even published guides on  laboratory wall decor and  lab flooring . Now this guide to buy equipment for laboratories will help you with lab apparatus, lab glassware, lab instruments, and lab machines.

To be sure, deciding on, procuring, and managing laboratory equipment is difficult work. To make it easier, let’s take baby steps ‒ by beginning at the beginning.

To Start A Laboratory

To begin with, what is the type of laboratory that you need? In India, laboratories vary by their levels. At school levels, you have laboratories of the most common kind ‒ composite labs for class IX-X, and physics, chemistry, and biology labs for class XI-XII. There is also a  mathematics lab for schools that need it. Recently we are seeing developments in labs of other subjects like sociology and geography as well. For even younger students, there is the  STEM lab facility.

When you get to the university level, the picture changes dramatically. There are simply too many different kinds of college labs to mention here, and all of them have different lab equipment and lab instrument needs. We can talk about those separately, another day.

Therefore, let’s assume you’re building a lab for your school. But what exactly is your goal? There are two reasons to buy lab equipment for schools ‒  either to make a new lab for affiliation purposes, or to upgrade an existing laboratory. Either way, you have some hardcore spreadsheet work before you.

Count Your Chickens

This is the part where we deal with the “what I need” matter. Each laboratory has two dimensions ‒ the first is the count of different lab equipment, and the second is their quantity, a derivative of the count of users. You have to chalk up both dimensions.

Let us explain with an example. The CBSE composite lab, for affiliation purposes, has to follow the  NCERT science lab syllabus directly. That some schools choose to make slight adjustments to it is another matter, and you shouldn’t practice this anyway. Be that as it may, the syllabus has 36 different experiments (and variations or sub-work). That requires a whopping 272 different kinds of equipment! Further, as per affiliation rules, a CBSE composite lab has to cater to at least 30 students at once. That takes the count of lab equipment that you will need near half a thousand.

To be sure, ledgering out five hundred lab equipment is no small task and at first you may feel like drowning. Sure, you can try talking to other schools or beg your contacts to get a full list of lab equipment, but they are 1) very hard to come by, 2) people who have them guard them jealously, and 3) there is definitely a trust factor involved here. 

We at Labkafe understand this perfectly, and have a particularly useful solution for this:  lab equipment packages . Labkafe has preconfigured affiliation packages for different labs for all boards (CBSE, ICSE, ISC,  IGCSE, State Boards, etc.) which are handmade to fulfill the respective curriculums precisely and perfectly. If you are interested in building a CBSE composite lab, as per the ongoing example, you can just order a  CBSE composite lab package from us and be worry-free.

But that’s not all. We would not want you to blindly order something just because you read it here. Instead, how about doing some homework about the quality? You should always check the markets to see which brands provide the best quality lab equipment, apparatus, lab aprons, and glassware. Then crosscheck with your chosen vendor to see if they can give you those brands as well. For example, Borosil, Tarsons, and Polylab are the most well-known names in the lab ware industry for quality, and therefore  Labkafe has joined up with them as well.

Laboratory Items come with different quality levels. The regular quality items are cheaper but not much dependable. The superior quality items are the very best, but will cost you a pretty penny. Lab instrument accuracy will depend upon their quality and manufacturer, and the effectiveness of chemicals and other consumables will depend greatly on their brand. 

Choose Your Champion

Once you have your list of lab equipment ready for physics lab, biology lab, chemistry lab, or composite lab (or any other labs for that matter), your next job is to find a proper lab equipment supplier. This is the part with the most amount of original research, since it is a very bad idea to depend upon the first vendor you come across with a simple “lab equipment near me” search. Sure, private references are great too ‒ but it still is just word of mouth, so best do your homework first.

A proper, reliable laboratory equipment supplier will not only be reputed on paper, but they will be able to  prove their references . The salespersons of a genuinely good company will always be ready with connections. The more references you can get, the better. Also check if they have worked with government agencies or institutes ‒ this will prove invaluable.

For a better experience, we recommend that you prefer OEMs over resellers. Original Equipment Manufacturers will provide you better quality at more affordable prices, will give you flexible choices, and what’s most important ‒ will provide you with good aftersales service.

Which brings us to our next point. In the laboratory industry, good aftersales service is as crucial as it is rare. Most vendors work in a fire-and-forget manner and don’t look back to a customer. Which puts the customer at a disadvantage. There are only a very few companies that give true unlimited support and an ironclad warranty. With such a vendor, you can rest assured that your interests are taken care of properly. This, then, should form one of the pillars of your procurement management.

Money Matters

Ah, the budget! It is a painful subject in any society and schools are no exception. One always wants the best for one’s students. Certainly you want your kids to get the most out of their practical education, in compliance with the  National Education Policy 2020 and global trends. 

That being said, one always finds oneself short of budget, right? Your lab equipment list and labware vendor both must conform with the budget; else all is lost. Few opportunities are given to us to extend our budgets, and saying “it’s for the good of the students” doesn’t seem to be a viable option these days. (Or ever.) 

So, here we are chiseling off portions from our procurement list to make it slimmer. With lab equipment, you can do it two ways:

1. Trim out the experiments. Most cheap schools go this way, not choosing to complete the practical syllabus. Only backbenchers will applaud this.
2. Manage the consumables. More often than not, the consumables get a bigger chunk out of the budget than the equipment themselves. For example, test tubes are cheap and you can buy tons of them, but the reagents that go inside them are so prohibitively expensive that many local vendors don’t even stock some of the most important ones. You can work with your vendor to carefully trim out these lab supplies and work out alternatives.

While the need to conform to your budget is necessary, a word to the wise. The really good stuff in this world never comes cheap ‒ and we should never compromise on education. Reaching a good platform between quality and price is key to your lab’s success ‒ and the future of anyone who uses it.

Another way to save is to buy things in packs. Instead of buying items separately, you would find it much more profitable to buy lab packages and lab aprons packs. Of course, everyone has local choices and needs, and that may force your hand. It would be best if your lab equipment supplier provides customizable lab packages, offering you room to maneuver as well as cost savings. 

In A Nutshell

Making a new laboratory for a school is never easy, and it is even harder for new schools. Today we tried to make the process easier by offering you this lab equipment buying guide. Long story short: list out exactly what you need, find a reputed seller, and hash out a good price eyeing your budget. 

Checking out the equipment (especially the glassware) when they get delivered is a great idea too. A good lab equipment seller will do this onsite inspection automatically and should provide free replacements if anything came out wrong while unpacking. Additionally, Labkafe also gives free installation services, in tune with our vision to spread accessible lab education to every corner of the country.