Forston Labs

Portable Monitor/Mini GC System Lowers Remediation Analysis Times and Costs

Seacoast Science, Inc. and Forston Labs announce the launch of the Forston Mini Gas Chromatograph (GC). The new product is based on Seacoast’s SeaPORT Mini GC, which uses MEMS technology originally developed for the Army Research Laboratories, and is integrated with the Forston Labs LabNavigator resulting in a powerful, small shoebox-sized, lightweight, portable GC.

The Forston Mini GC provides unmatched capabilities for use in soil and water remediation, security and safety, industrial processing, quality control applications and a wide range of laboratory applications. This Mini GC is easily affordable and can outfit each technician or field site to provide real time data for analysis on-site or to be sent immediately to the supervising chemist with the use of a cell phone.

The addition of the Forston Mini GC to the LabNavigator system allows users to tailor the rugged, easy to operate equipment for over 30 parameters. The system has the ability to acquire, monitor, and analyze data from up to six simultaneous sensor inputs. This means compliance personnel can dramatically shorten the time needed to verify critical changes in environments or processes. Shortened response times lower remediation costs dramatically.

The hand-held LabNavigator is a multi-technology/multi-sensor analytical measurement platform used either as a computer interface, a stand-alone device or in the field for water analysis. Until now, analytical instrumentation used for water quality applications have either been low quality/cost or high quality/cost. Even moderately priced instruments of adequate quality are still a significant cost for water and wastewater plants.

With six sensor inputs (electrochemical, turbidity, spectrophotometer, and more), the cost-effective LabNavigator has a 100k samples per second collection rate. The instrument has built-in graphing and analysis software; 40 MB of on-board data storage, with further expansion through SD/MMC card, or USB drive; a vivid 320 x 240 pixel color touch screen easily visible outdoors, and; a rugged, splash proof enclosure with rubber molding for shock absorption. Other features are a rechargeable, high capacity internal battery or AC power; built-in air temperature sensor; microphone, and sound sensor; an on-screen keyboard; plus the easy ability to take notes during experiments and export the results to a PC.

We are pleased to announce that Forston Labs new LabNavigator instrument comes ready to interface with Ocean Optics spectrophotometers and fluorometers,” said Brian Williams, Forston Labs president and CEO. “Users of Ocean Optics portable USB interfaced spectrophotometers can now power their spectrophotometer directly from the LabNavigator USB port. They will see their spectrophotometer analysis in full color on the instrument’s LCD display as they take measurements in the field, in lab or at their desk. No longer will they need to be tied to their computer.

Also introduced today is Forston’s affordable UV/Vis CCD spectrophotometer/fluorometer array instrument combination that allows analysts to collect a full wavelength spectrum absorbance,percent transmittance, or intensity in less than one second. Once the peak wavelength has been determined, the analyst can then easily determine the concentration of a solution or monitor rates of reaction.

Industrial Instrument

Portable Analytical Instrument Industrial :

Gold : EMD Millipore’s Scepter

Automated Handheld Cell Counter.

Silver :Forston Labs’ LabNavigator

Multiparameter Water Analyzer.

Bronze : Wagtech’s Metalyser HM1000

Portable Heavy Metals Analyzer.

Laboratory Equipment Industrial :

Gold : Steroglass’s Strike 300

Rotary Evaporator .

Silver : ELGA’s PURELAB flex

Water Purification System .

Bronze : VELP Scientifica’s DKL Digester Series.

Analytical Instrument Industrial :

Gold : Illumina's for microarray analysis and next-generation sequencing.
Silver : Anton Paar’s Monowave 300
Microwave Synthesis Reactor.
Bronze : Affymetrix’s GeneAtlas System, a solution for personal microarray use.

Forston, Inc., (DBA Forston Labs) is incorporated as a 'C' corporation in the state of Colorado and is headquartered in Fort Collins, Colorado. The primary business is analytical instrumentation for water quality industries.

About Us

A clean and safe environment is essential to life. The full range of analytical instrumentation required for ensuring this has to date been either of low cost and low quality or of high cost and high quality. Today's moderately priced equipment which is of sufficient capability, is still often a very significant cost for Water and Wastewater Plants, Industrial Applications, Environmental Studies and for a multitude of other Analytical Laboratories.

Forston Labs is founded on the concept that there already exists technologies and equipment that can bring high quality analytical equipment using a variety of methods to end users for which it has previously been out of reach. Our method is to bring these different technologies into one interface, and increase ease of use and affordability. The LabNavigator System provides a common, handheld, easy to use, rugged interface for over thirty different sensor types. Including technologies for temperature to colorimetry, electrochemistry and even gas chromatography, analytical chemistry for all users is taking a leap forward with the LabNavigator