The thread
A modified buttress thread, three full turns at a 2.5 mm pitch, with 0.15 mm of running clearance so it turns smoothly wet, gloved or cold. The steep load flank pulls the lid down and holds it.
The screw-top
agar plate.
The world's first patented screw-top petri dish, vented for continuous gas exchange. It closes with a quarter turn, it breathes on its own, and it never needs a wrap of parafilm again.
Welcome
- 500 / $115
- Pre-order run
- 30
- Vent channels
- 90 mm
- Working floor
- Zero
- Parafilm
- 1 Buttress thread, three turns
- 2 30 vent channels through the thread
- 3 90 mm working floor
Patented screw top●No parafilm●Continuous gas exchange●Autoclavable polycarbonate●Black Forest, Colorado●
Patented screw top●No parafilm●Continuous gas exchange●Autoclavable polycarbonate●Black Forest, Colorado●
01 / The problem
Parafilm was never
a design. It was
a workaround.
Every plate you pour gets wrapped by hand. The film stretches, tears, sticks to your gloves and then seals a living culture inside a box with no air. After one use it goes in the bin. The screw top replaces that whole ritual with a thread, and the vents give the culture the exchange it needed in the first place.
Wrapped plate
Screw top
Closing a plateStretch and wrap by handA quarter turn
Gas exchangeBlocked, or punctured by hand30 engineered channels
Consumables per plateA strip of film, then landfillNone
Contamination pathFilm lifts and gapes at the seamA threaded labyrinth
StackingRolls, slips, slides off the shelfFlat, keyed, stable
Second useSingle useAutoclave and run it again
02 / How it closes
Three parts doing
one job.
The vents
Thirty vertical channels are cut straight through the lid thread, roughly one per centimetre of circumference. Air moves in and out continuously. Nothing gets a straight line into the dish.
The body
A 90 mm working floor in 1.25 mm autoclavable polycarbonate, with 0.5 mm internal radii so there is no sharp corner for contamination to sit in. Run it, clean it, autoclave it, run it again.
03 / Engineering
Drawn to the tenth
of a millimetre.
The plate was built as a parametric solid model and released to the moulder as a fully dimensioned control drawing, not a sketch. Every number below is from the released model.
SECTION A-A / BFC-PD90-001 / REV A
A plate is either breathing or it is closed. The vented lid and the gasket-seated lid are mutually exclusive by design, so you choose the mode when you order rather than compromising on both.
04 / Pre-order
The first
production run.
Founding batch
$115for 500 plates
That works out at 23 cents a plate, and it is the cheapest these will ever be. The pre-order funds the tooling for the first production run.
- 500 vented screw-top research agar plates
- 90 mm, autoclavable polycarbonate
- Packed in the Black Forest boxes
- Shipped from Colorado when the run lands
Sold through the Black Forest Cultures storefront on Culture Cave.
What the film costs you
Run your own numbers.
2,400strips binned a year
$120spent on film a year
17 hrsat the bench wrapping
Your numbers, not ours. Change any of them.
05 / Cultures
Genetics out of
the Black Forest.
Isolated on agar, grown out under the light, photographed, and only then listed. Nothing leaves the lab until it has run clean on a plate.
Agar plates
Sector isolations taken to a clean, rhizomorphic front on the plate before anything is transferred on.
Liquid culture
Started from plate tissue, never from an unknown. Shaken, settled, and checked before it ships.
Isolations
Wedge transfers off a proven plate, kept on a slant, and logged so the line stays traceable.
The full catalogue lives on the Black Forest Cultures storefront.
Visit the storefrontCultures and lab supplies are sold for legal research, microscopy and gourmet cultivation where permitted. 18+.
06 / Ventures
Three businesses,
one bench.
Founder
Black Forest Cultures
Genetics, agar work and the patented screw-top research plate, out of Black Forest, Colorado.
culturecave.store/blackforestcultures → Co-ownerCulture Cave
The Colorado marketplace where vetted cultivation vendors run their own storefronts under one roof.
culturecave.store → FounderSporePrint
The world's first packaging supplier built only for mycology. Boxes, labels and print made for this trade.
sporeprint.app →Michael / @michael_ogical
07 / About
The man at
the flow hood.
Michael runs Black Forest Cultures out of Black Forest, Colorado. He is a co-owner of Culture Cave LLC, and he runs SporePrint, the first packaging supplier built for mycology alone.
The screw-top plate did not start as a product. It started as a problem on his own bench: months of wrapping plates in film that blocked the exchange his cultures needed. So he designed the plate that did not need it, and took it to tooling.
“I've been working on this for months and it's finally coming to fruition.”Michael, announcing the plate