Let’s see if you’ve heard this one before: you get the funds authorized from your purchasing department, you wait for your cuvette to arrive and when it does, you plop it into your spectrophotometer hoping to see a nice transmission curve over 80%.

The only problem is that you’re getting something closer to 20-30% and your readings are horribly askew!

What’s likely happened is that you got the wrong z-dimension or centre height for your machine and you’ve mismatched the cuvette to the machine. Instead of your lightbeam entering the window, it’s bouncing off a black quartz surface! Normally this would mean that you have to go through the cumbersome process of having to get an RMA issued, returning the cuvette and trying again with the right z-dimension.

There are a couple of remedies here: firstly check FireflySci’s handy z-dimension guide and make sure you’re covered OR you can check out FireflySci’s new A27 adapter toolkit and never worry about z-dimension mismatches again!

All you need to do is screw the A27 adapter into the bottom of your cuvette holder and you will be covered. For instance, if you have a cuvette that has a window 8.5mm up from the cell but your machine’s beam is 15mm up, quickly install our A27A adapter and you’re set.