Beads matched to your sample
The right bead material and size decides how well your sample breaks down. Harder, denser beads hit harder. Softer matrices need less. We supply all common materials, and we help you pick.
Metal beads
Ceramic beads
Glass beads
Mini Bead Beater 96
A compact, variable speed homogenizer that processes a full 96 well plate or a rack of tubes and vials at once. A practical alternative to a large tissue lyser when bench space and budget matter, and a natural partner to the bead dispenser.
The complete workflow
Bead mill homogenizer: how it works and what to look for
A bead mill homogenizer disrupts biological samples by shaking or vortexing them at high speed together with homogenization beads. The beads collide with the sample matrix, breaking cell walls and releasing intracellular content into the surrounding buffer. The method is fast, closed-tube and fully scalable from a single vial to an entire 96-well plate in one run.
Selecting the right homogenization beads matters as much as the instrument itself. Dense metal beads (chrome steel or stainless steel, 3 to 6 mm) suit hard plant tissue, seeds and grain. Smaller zirconia or silica beads (0.3 to 1 mm) are the standard choice for microbial lysis, yeast and soft animal tissue because they generate less heat and lower the risk of nucleic acid shearing. Glass beads in the 0.5 to 1 mm range work well for cell culture and samples where metal contamination must be avoided. See the full selection on our grinding media page.
The LabTIE Mini BeadBeater-96 is a compact bead mill homogenizer designed around high-throughput sample prep. It processes a full 96-well plate at variable speed with a small bench footprint, and it pairs with the LabTIE bead dispenser to load homogenization beads into every well automatically. The bead beaters page covers run parameters, pulse settings and compatible plate formats in detail.