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The other choice is to make your own dishes.
Take a cork borer about 2 - 3 mm smaller in diameter than the cover
slips you wish to use, heat with a bunsen burner -- holding the borer
tip-up, so that cold air goes up to the tip and you don't get burned,
these things make nice chimneys -- then quickly bore a hole through
the plastic dish. Trim away any "lip" produced with a razor blade,
and seal the cover slip to the dish with silicone sealant, the same
kind used to make aquaria.
An advantage of this is that any cover slip and any plastic dish can
be used, not just the ones companies supply. So, finding getting a
dish that has a cover slip with a particular grid, or thickness, or
... is no problem. Or at least, no more problem than finding the
dishes and coverslips.
Also, more than one well can be made in a dish, allowing replicates
and better controlled experiments. One long coverslip, say 22 X 50 mm
can to used as a bottom for several wells, allowing for one coating
to be used for different experiments/controls, or different, smaller
coverslips can be used for each well bored in the dish.
We nicked this idea from another lab on campus, and I don't know from
whom they nicked it.

Phil

A scientist friend at a bio-tech company in Australia is researching
the possibility of sorting sperm by morphology on a microscope; tough
ask!!
However to have any chance of success he will need to use both high
numerical aperture and long working distance objectives sequentially.

To achieve this he will need to find a source of glass bottom petri
dishes to be imported to Australia.

These dishes will need to be sterile and made of plastic with a cover
glass porthole in the base.
The cover glass will require a grid to be etched or printed on it
with a legend for cell location.

I can provide the importation logistics support for importing
suitable glass bottom dishes for my friend.

Please could anyone recommend a quality manufacturer (from any world
location) of petri glass bottom dishes meeting the above
specifications.

Your suggestions would be most appreciated.

Philip


--
Philip Oshel
Supervisor, BBPIC microscopy facility
Department of Animal Sciences
University of Wisconsin
1675 Observatory Drive
Madison,  WI  53706 - 1284
voice: (608) 263-4162
fax: (608) 262-5157 (dept. fax)