Glass test tubes for science, kitchenware, crafts, gifts, wedding decorations or product display. Our tubes are thick-walled borosilicate glass that are food safe. All come with round bottoms and are machine washable. Thick reinforced rims & optional tall tapered corks ensure airtight stoppering or make convenient hanging plant propagation stations. Indigo test tubes are completely blank top to bottom for custom branding.
Buy just a few of one or more sizes to try out your cool idea & then get them in bulk with 50% off wholesale pricing. Save even more with our cork stopper bundles.
Glass test tubes, like graduated cylinders, Erlenmeyer & volumetric flasks, are common pieces of biology and chemistry laboratory testing equipment. Our lab quality test tubes are made with borosilicate glass, ideal for its resistance to high temperature & chemical inertness.
Applications range from growing tissue and bacterial cultures to root cuttings, measuring pH or observing chemical reactions. They come as small, medium or large capacity tubes suitable for mixing, heating or even product packaging and display. All Indigo glass test tubes come with beaded rims for spill-free pouring and repeated safe stoppering. Our larger thick-walled 25, 32 & 38 tubes will tolerate prolonged boiling.
Every tube is completely blank for custom imprinting your brand or marketing message. Buy just one to test your project idea & then save up to 50% on bulk buys & tube/stopper bundles.
Being made of borosilicate glass is not a guarantee of quality of itself. Uniform test tube wall thickness is essential for safety, durability & repeated use, maximum heat transfer and chemical resistance. The average wall thickness of Indigo Instruments borosilicate glass test tubes are listed below for outside diameters (OD) of our tubes. Borosilicate glass culture tubes on the other hand are made with thin walls in order to be inexpensive & should be considered disposable test tubes.
13mm | 18mm | 25mm | 32mm | 38mm |
1.04 | 1.32 | 1.4 | 1.48 | 1.73 |
Note (1): We do not carry graduated test tubes with beaded rims; the closest thing we have to offer are graduated cylinders.
Note (2): We cannot guarantee our test tubes will fit your test tube rack. If this could be an issue, contact us first.
Besides wall thickness, our test tubes have reinforced rims for repeated safe stoppering. Our cork stoppers are produced in Portugal using sustainable growth practices. They are a truly natural product with excellent mechanical properties (see blog below in More Info). More importantly, these stoppers are produced according to the highest cleanliness standards backed by this certificate of cleanliness & cleaning procedures.
The top row in the table below lists the nominal outside diameter of our test tubes. The bottom row is the average height of the tapered cork stoppers that fit them. There is some variance in test tube internal diameter to allow for corks to fit anywhere from 1/3 to 2/3 of their height. Since cork is compressible across its diameter, these thicknesses help ensure airtight seals no matter what the ID variance is.
13mm | 18mm | 25mm | 32mm | 38mm |
17.5mm (0.69") | 22mm (0.87") | 32mm (1.25") | 32mm (1.25") | 38mm (1.5") |
Indigo test tubes meet all the necessary specifications for use in chemistry labs. Specifically, resistance to most chemicals and thermal shock. This also makes them particularly useful in product packaging & display. Here are just a few of the uses our customers have found for our tubes. Not shown are bath salts, candy sprinkles, tea, cannabis, and wine. All tubes come with reinforced rims except where noted otherwise.
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...in Reviews on Google Places. Some are excerpts. Read the whole review by clicking on the names of the reviewers.
Deshana Barua: I brought some glass tubes to display my propagations and replace a broken one. Their prices are very reasonable (it’s impossible to buy just a single piece from online retailers like Amazon, which I’d rather not support anyway) and they processed my order and shipped very quickly. They arrived well-packaged with no broken glass and appear to be well-made.
Holly Christensen Ordered 15 test tubes. Very well packaged, quick delivery times, high quality test tubes that feel great. Thanks for the great service!
Anna Hovius I was pleased with the response that I got at Indigo Instruments - very helpful, very courteous and polite. I really appreciated the way you handled my very small purchase - like it was a... more
Lindsay McLennan Great service! I forgot to order the corks with my tubes and they had them shipped out that day and arrived at my door within 4 days! WOW! Great company to deal with. Happy to have found them before the Christmas Season arrives, as we are making these adorable Reindeer hot chocolate gifts. Thank you!
Lisa Harpster We love Indigo Instruments! They are super responsive, fair pricing, flexible and they are total problem solvers.
Borosilicate glass, sometimes referred to as "pyrex" is standard in lab glassware. It's resistant to thermal shock and is food safe because it is completely LEAD FREE compared to glass used in cut crystal, etc.!
See the tables below for physical characteristics. The first row lists the coefficient of linear thermal which is the best indicator for resistance to thermal shock . It is roughly1/3 of soda lime glass, the type most commonly used in food & drink.
Borosilicate Glass Properties - Physical Data | |||||
Physical Performance | Numerical Value | Unit | |||
Coefficient of mean linear expansion (20°C; 300°C) | 3.3 ± 0.1 | 10-6K-1 | |||
Transformation Temperature | 525 ± 15 | °C | |||
Softening Point | 820 ± 10 | °C | |||
Working Point | 1260 ±20 | °C | |||
Density at 20°C | 2.23 ± 0.02 | g/cm3 | |||
Mean Thermal Conductivity (20°C-100°C) | 1.2 | w/rn2k | |||
Refractive Index | 0.92 | 1 |
Glassware cannot be returned for any reason; this is for your safety and ours. It would be prohibitively expensive to test for bacteriological, chemical or radiological agents since there is no way to tell if glass has been contaminated just by looking at it. We would have to throw it away even if you claim to never have opened the package.
However, if the item is broken or clearly defective such as severely or chipped, send us an image & we will refund you.
Handle glassware with care & personal protective equipment (PPE) - goggles & gloves because: