Gel breaker tube alternatives

[ES5063]

We routinely use gel breaker tubes from IST Engineering after cutting our libraries out of gels, as recommended by our Illumina library prep. I've just been told there are some issues with IST and the tubes I ordered a month ago may still take a couple more months to arrive.

I'm look for alternatives that others use. I've used a basic plastic microfuge tube pestle before, but it was much more of a pain than the gel breaker tubes, so I wouldn't look forward to that on a large number of libraries.


Edit: I have found some Illumina guides that suggest piercing a 0.5 mL tube with a needle but I would greatly prefer something I can purchase to cut down on time needed to hand make all of these

[ES5063]

Admins if you want to move/delete this thread please feel, it may have been better placed under Sample Prep.

As information for anyone else, Fisher and SeqMatic also sell these tubes (produced by IST Engineering). Fisher doesn't seem to keep a stock but SeqMatic did and I was able to acquire through them.