Zircofit UHPLC crimping tool

Zircofit UHPLC crimping tool connects 1/16″ PEEK sleeves onto your 360um OD fused silica tubing – up to UHPLC pressures

Are you tired of waiting for expensive capillaries ordered at fixed lengths, when you want to run your next experiment and just need a different sized loop for your micro-HPLC assay? Or have you always dreamed about the capability to fit a regular 1/16″ VICI-nut to a 360µm Fused Silica line in your own lab – just as needed? Well, maybe this dream became true…

The ZircoFit™ system was developed to meet the need of modern-day micro- and nano-UHPLC users for custom-length, high-pressure fused silica connections. Easy to use, functional, and economical, it is unique on the market today.

The Zircofit UHPLC concept uses a crimping tool adapted for the purpose of nanoLC sleeve crimping. Now you can have that custom-length (or volume) connection in a matter of minutes. The starter kit contains all the parts needed for ten complete capillary connections and comes in a handy tool case: ZircoFit™crimp sleeves, 1/16″ conical fittings, fused silica capillaries and cutter, PTFE protective tubing, and the ZircoFit™ crimping tool. The latter is a squeezer that fits the sleeves onto the capillaries tight enough that they will not leak at 20,000 PSI.

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How it Works

The core of the system is a combination of a PEEK sleeve with a fitted stainless steel collar on one side. Crimped with the appropriate squeezer, this assembly has a much stronger grip on the capillary than what would be possible by only pressing a normal conical ferrule onto a plastic sleeve.

The consumable part of Zircofit is a CNC lathe 1/16″ PEEK sleeve with a crimp-able metal collar crafted to exactly the same 1/16″ OD as a normal sleeve. That way, one gets a PEEK sleeve with a metal section one can crimp onto the fused silica tubing. The crimping makes a rock solid connection of your sleeve onto the 360um OD fused silica – regardless of the applied LC pressure. The connection is so solid that it becomes impossible to slip / skip / slide under LC pressure and/or LC injection pressure pulses.

The ZircoFit Starter Kit is all you need to make reliable UHPLC compliant 1/16″ sleeves onto your fused silica tubing. Consumable parts can be re-ordered. Below, please find a set of pictures taken during use of the Zircofrit kit (and at the end of the page you can also find an introductory video about the ZircoFit).

Once a Zircofit sleeve is put onto your fused silica tubing, one only needs to level the fused silica with the sleeve, crimp and its done. A correct crimp is so strong that one can not move the sleeve any more, forming a bond suitable for UHPLC pressures.