A laboratory is nothing without proper cabinets and casework. An active lab of any reasonable size is bound to be teeming with all sorts of chemicals, tools and substances, many of which are volatile and potentially dangerous. These will absolutely need to be stored away when not in use.
There are lab cabinets and casework of many different kinds. But stainless steel cabinets stand head-and-shoulders above any other type that you could possibly choose to supply your lab with. In nearly all important situations and for nearly every major purpose, stainless steel casework brings significant advantages to the labs that have it.
Here, we’ll go through five major reasons why stainless steel casework is a must for your lab and how RDM Industrial Products can provide you with the factory-direct and industrial-quality furnishings that you need. As you’ll see, these reasons are not always independent of one another. Many of them bleed into one another, which only serves to make the case for stainless steel even stronger.
RDM Stainless Steel Casework is available in a variety of Stainless Steel Cabinet Styles including Base Cabinets and Upper Cabinets
1. Stainless Steel Cabinets are Chemical-and-Corrosion-Resistant
The first priority in any lab should be the safety of all researchers and other lab workers. When your work inevitably requires you to keep some unstable and highly reactive substances close at hand, it’s essential to keep them tucked away in environments where they cannot cause harm. Mishaps with dangerous chemicals may either seriously hurt lab personnel or irreparably damage valuable lab equipment.
The chemical properties of certain compounds make it so that human error is not even strictly necessary for something bad to happen. A chemical placed in the wrong surroundings, stored in the wrong type of storage unit or around the wrong types of other chemicals, can go off and wreak untold havoc.
Corrosion is also a serious long-run danger when dealing with stainless steel equipment because all metal can rust. A lab bench, cart, table, or set of lockers of cabinets become extremely unreliable and virtually useless if it becomes rusted or corroded. When this happens, you’ll need to replace whatever has been corroded.
The importance of avoiding all of this cannot be overstated. Thankfully, RDM manufactures chemical-and corrosion-resistant stainless steel cabinets. Our units can be custom-made to be immune to powerful acids that would chew up weaker materials. This is especially important for casework doubling as a laboratory workbench. As such units allow lab scientists and technicians to work and store their chemicals in the same spot.
2. Stainless Steel is Easy to Clean
Stainless steel has its name for a reason. The metal is totally non-porous and therefore doesn’t retain any moisture or allow leftover chemicals to seep into itself. That makes it easy to clean. Its chemical-resistant properties, mentioned above, also make it able to endure bleach or other aggressive cleaning agents, and that only adds to the ease with which it can be kept sterile. Easy cleaning means fewer headaches for those who do the cleaning.
Cleanliness, sterility, prevention of infections and the like are essential to most labs. Once again, worker safety is paramount. For these reasons, you should never overlook how easy stainless steel casework is to clean.
3. Durability
Steel is tough. It’s difficult to dent and just about impossible to break. Thus, even apart from our ability to beef up your lab cabinets’ chemical and corrosion resistance properties, the fact that they’re made of stainless steel means that they will last and last.
Let’s face it: accidents happen. We all know about the danger of inadvertent chemical spills, but labs often use heavy and cumbersome tools as well. A cart weighed down with tools might accidentally hit a workbench or cabinet and damage it, or a worker might drop something heavy, leading it to crash down onto a work surface and render the surface unusable. If your lab has stainless steel cabinets, any damage from such accident will nearly always be minor.
4. Versatility With a Variety of Options
RDM’s stainless steel furnishings come in a variety of different forms. Of course, we create quality-designed laboratory cabinets of all sizes, but stainless steel’s toughness make it the perfect material out of which to create many other kinds of laboratory furniture as well.
One of our different types of laboratory cabinets are sets of cabinets doubling as work benches and complete with drawers for additional storage and a faucet which you can use to quickly wash off chemicals when needed. The workbench surface itself is highly durable, and we can custom-design each unit to be chemical-resistant, corrosion-resistant, covered in plastic laminate and thus easier to wash, or whatever else you need. The cabinets themselves are at the ground level, beneath the drawers. This setup is particularly convenient for lab workers.
We also manufacture larger cabinets that are up to 84 inches high and have massive doors to keep whatever you place onto the shelves safely locked away. These cabinets can be built with standard swinging doors, sliding doors, doors made of glass or steel, or no doors at all — as suits your preference.
Beyond the cabinets, we also manufacture other miscellaneous kinds of stainless steel furnishings, like carts, workbenches, tables and lockers. All of these come in varying shapes and sizes. Our furnishings can help you make reliable and durable workstations for each of your researchers. Even allowing you to customize things to their specific requirements. Thy can help you store material away when not in use or transport them across the lab with ease and speed when you need them. We encourage you to check out some of our other laboratory furniture as well.
5. Value and Cost Efficiency
We’ve already discussed how tough steel casework is and how it can be specially designed to resist the ravages of caustic chemicals. What we haven’t mentioned yet is how these and other qualities are good for your lab’s bottom line.
Physically durable casework can be used reliably and for a long time. Casework with longevity doesn’t need to be replaced nearly as often. Easily cleanable casework that can keep dangerous chemicals safely in check. This also creates a lab where people are less likely to get hurt though contact with something hazardous. All of these things ultimately mean lower costs for your lab, both in terms of equipment replacement costs and other costs that may accompany injured or incapacitated workers.
It’s especially important for lab managers to understand this. Even though cabinets made of another material like wood may save you lab a few bucks in the short run, stainless steel furnishings will help you accumulate cost savings and will thus more than pay for themselves over the long run.
Conclusion
Every lab needs ample storage space. When you need to store anything important or dangerous, stainless steel is indisputably the ideal material for your cabinets. All of RDM’s stainless steel cabinets and other laboratory furnishings are proudly manufactured in the USA. Have a look at some of our products and pick out what’s right for your lab.