Description:

The SciCan STATIM 2000 cassette autoclave is a compact, countertop steam-sterilizer engineered for rapid instrument turnaround in dental, medical, and body-art practices.  Instead of a conventional cylindrical pressure chamber, the STATIM uses a thin aluminum cassette that slides into a 19.5 × 16.3 × 5.9-inch chassis.  Just 2.6 fl oz (≈77 mL) of distilled water is drawn from an internal 1.06-gallon reservoir for each cycle, flash-heated in a copper boiler, then pulsed through the cassette under microprocessor control.  The low thermal mass of the cassette plus SciCan’s Dri-Tec™ vacuum exhaust lets an unwrapped load reach 135 °C in 15 seconds and complete sterilization in 3.5 minutes, with a total cycle of six minutes including drying; wrapped and rubber/plastic cycles are likewise pre-programmed and selectable from the soft-touch membrane panel.  Integrated sensors monitor chamber temperature, pressure, and water level, while the cassette seal, bacterial retentive air filters, and printer/RS-232 port are all user-serviceable.  A spring-loaded pressure-relief valve set at 43.5 psi provides fail-safe protection, and up to 30 cycles’ worth of data can be output for compliance records.  The whole unit weighs only 46 lb dry and runs from a standard 110 V, 11 A outlet (220-240 V, 6 A models are also available).

Economic Advantage:

When it debuted, the STATIM 2000 dramatically cut the “idle inventory” of critical handpieces and scalers: an office could sterile-reprocess a small tray in roughly one-third the time of even a fast, benchtop chamber autoclave, freeing staff from instrument bottlenecks or the cost of keeping extra sets on hand.  Its cassette architecture also consumes less than a cup of water per run and vents only cooled steam, so it needs neither a plumbed drain nor an HVAC hood—making it inexpensive to install beside the operatory and inexpensive to operate over its life cycle.  The combination of six-minute turnaround, low utility use, and verified sterilization prints gave the STATIM series a total-cost advantage that competitors could not match for more than a decade.