Category Archives: Onyx PXC

Onyx PXC, pinnacle pcx

Flashy Fun Content Hitting the Web – Amino Acids Analysis and the Onyx PCX

By Maria Ofitserova

Onyx PCX workstationNormally, summer and fall would mark our busy travel season with several important conferences and trade shows to prepare for and attend. With the majority of conferences cancelled, rescheduled or moved to virtual platforms, we are staying close to home and focusing on supporting our customers as they navigate the fast-changing COVID-19 pandemic situation.

After introducing the Onyx PCX at Pittcon in March 2020, we are happy to report positive feedback from users of our newest post-column derivatization instrument. One of our goals when developing the Onyx PCX was to ensure a seamless transition of methods from the Pinnacle PCX to the new model. This allows companies to minimize validation steps when switching to the Onyx PCX and early customer responses show our efforts were worth it! Our extra attention to this during design is definitely being appreciated now by laboratories who already have the Pinnacle PCX system and are looking to expand or update their instrumentation.

The coronavirus pandemic continues to drive expansion of biotech research and manufacturing, with many companies and contract laboratories using amino acids analysis to identify and characterize biopharmaceuticals, determine purity and optimize manufacturing processes. The Onyx PCX is uniquely suitable for performing with excellence in regulated environments. Easy and robust operation, extensive record-keeping capabilities for troubleshooting as well as regulatory compliance and the ability to work with any HPLC setup makes the Onyx PCX a great choice for any laboratory running amino acids analysis.

By spending our time here at home and not presenting at various technical conferences, myself and the other chemists also had the opportunity to get creative and stretch beyond scientific posters into the world of marketing! We have created short videos highlighting the best features of Onyx PCX and capabilities of post-column amino acids analysis. You may have seen our LinkedIn posts about these videos – we are really quite proud of our work. Special thanks to David Mazawa for contributing the technical wizardry and to our graphic design consultant, Phil Mowery, for adding animations and sharpening up our look!

As always, at Pickering Laboratories we are concentrating on providing the best possible service and support for our customers. We have been hard at work strengthening our supply chain, adjusting production and inventory to meet the changing demand and collaborating closely with other companies to support our partners during this difficult time.  We know that our customers will appreciate our grit and resilience during 2020; we want to contribute to the best parts of what is working for your business as well.

New Products, Onyx PXC

Introducing the Onyx PCX!

By Rudy Suez

Click to enlarge

As the end of the year approaches, the leaves change colors and the days get shorter, here at Pickering Laboratories we are preparing for some exciting changes in our own familiar climate. We’re all extremely proud and excited about our next big release, the Onyx PCX. The Onyx PCX is our sleek next generation upgrade to the Pinnacle PCX that many of you are familiar with, and it delivers the same seamless operation and optimized analysis each and every time you run a sample. The Onyx PCX is the newest addition to our integrated family of post-column derivatization instruments, chemistry and support instrumentation.

The Onyx PCX is amazingly simple and intuitive, producing results you can rely on. The Onyx PCX’s reliable performance, elegant design, ease of use, and minimal maintenance make it the optimal Post-column system for research and analytical testing laboratories, as well as pharmaceutical and biotech companies. The Onyx PCX is capable of connecting to an array of HPLC units to meet your testing needs. Pickering Laboratories still offers the only instrumentation optimized for the analysis of Amino Acids, Carbamates, Glyphosate, Mycotoxins, Antibiotics and many other applications.

Pickering Laboratories commitment to quality and providing customers with technical solutions means we maintain a robust application-specific quality system, testing every instrument and consumable exactly as our customer will be using our products.  It also means we pride ourselves in being a leader in innovation by developing, producing, and delivering safe, effective, high quality post-column instruments and consumables that meet or exceed our customer expectations, on time, every time. We achieve these objectives through our chemists’ precision and expertise as well as adopting industry best practices and operating in the spirit of continuous improvement. 

Lastly, at Pickering Laboratories we are well aware that our success is derived from the mutual respect and support from our industry peers and long-time customers. So, thank you! We appreciate all of your feedback during the last decade; you have directly impacted our Onyx PCX instrument improvements.  To learn more about how the Onyx PCX differs from the Pinnacle PCX, please read David’s article where he discusses exactly that! 

To learn more about the new Onyx PCX please consider reading our exciting new brochure!

New Products, Onyx PXC, pinnacle pcx

Support Bulletin

by David Mazawa

Pinnacle PCX – End of Life Notice


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Dear valued customer,

It is with a heavy heart that we stop production of the Pinnacle PCX post-column system. A myriad of production issues has led us to develop a replacement instrument. We have a limited number of new Pinnacle PCX components remaining that we can build with, so we plan to stop production on March 1, 2020 (while supplies last). However, we will have Pinnacle PCX replacement components available until January 2030 to support our customers’ ongoing maintenance and repair needs.

Onyx PCX – New and Improved Instrument 

We have taken this as an opportunity to improve on the Pinnacle PCX design! Our new instrument, the Onyx PCX, has the following improvements and highlights:

Color

The color on the Onyx PCX was updated to be more modern and now the color gradient on the column compartment door mirrors its temperature gradient capability.

Size

The Onyx PCX is slightly larger to allow easier access to the inner compartments. This makes assembly and maintenance easier and faster.

Reagent Tray

The Onyx PCX reagent tray is much larger and can now be used as secondary containment for the reagent bottles. In case of a spill, the reagent tray can hold much more liquid than the Pinnacle reagent tray. There are also handles for easy removal.

LCD

The new larger LCD shows more details of what the instrument is doing. This makes it easy to see the system’s status at a glance.

Reactor

The Onyx PCX reactor is slightly smaller with more efficient heating and allows for field calibration by a trained engineer.

Pump and Valve Motors

The Onyx PCX Pump and Valve motors use different power than the Pinnacle PCX Pump and Valve motors. These are married to the board components and are not backwards compatible.

Column Compartment

No physical differences but we’ve enabled the Onyx PCX column heater to be calibrated in the field by a trained engineer.

Communication with PC

The Onyx PXC communicates exclusively via USB connection to the PC.

Software

The Onyx PCX Control Software has a different look to match the new display.

User Journal

The new User Journal feature records method, sequence details, run times, changes, and error messages for audit compliance.

Contact Pickering Technical Support (support@pickeringlabs.com) for any questions or contact our Customer Service Team (orders@pickeringlabs.com) with quotation requests.

Onyx PXC

Party Time – Launching the Onyx PCX!

By Rudy Suez

As an avid craft beer drinker, it is not often that I partake in lighter, bubblier drinking options.  But I made an exception last week as I joined the rest of the Pickering Laboratories staff in a champagne toast to celebrate our big milestone.

It’s a festive season and hopefully as you read this, you’re preparing to huddle around the dinner table with family and friends for the holidays. At Pickering last week, we kicked off December by huddling around our very first Onyx PCX instrument leaving the production floor!

As you can see from our faces, it’s like we are kids opening presents again… but instead of unwrapping our first bike we are unveiling our newest Post-column instrument, the Onyx PCX.

We couldn’t have asked for a better send-off for our customer’s Onyx PCX – it spent the day before shipping surrounded by champagne, cookies and chocolate croissants, as well as plenty of smiles and high fives!!! We are absolutely thrilled to wrap up this extended product development project and see the instrument hit the open market. I can’t help but wonder who will be next customer to order this amazing instrument? Will it be you?! I hope so.

Lastly, as we celebrate this momentous occasion, we also know that as a small company, we could not have done this alone. Therefore, our team wants to make sure we thank all of the contract engineers and consultants that have worked so hard with us, past and present, to bring the project to completion. Without their support, we would never have been able to launch our new post-column instrument… and we think the Onyx PCX has turned out sleek and fabulous, if we do say so ourselves!

So, again, a big champagne cheers to the first production Onyx PCX!  And a bigger thank you all of our contributors, customers and future customers!