Lab marker pens - (Nov/20/2012 )

What brands do you live by?

I'm looking for the perfect permanent marker which is alcohol-resistant and writes on all surfaces. I find that most "permanent" markers come off easily after a good 80% ethanol (v/v) wipe down especially in tissue/cell culture work where you sterilise everything by ethanol. I also had trouble when sterilising aliquots which were labelled by supposedly "permanent" markers.

This one was always good....I can't get it in France though:

http://www.fishersci.com/ecomm/servlet/fsproductdetail?storeId=10652&aid=158236&store=Scientific&segment=scientificStandard

For glassware these touch-up pens/paint-sticks/laquer pens (known from self-made car paint repairs if there's a scratch, i.e. these pens use real lacquer) are not bad. The paint is insoluble in water and ethanol but may solve plastics itself
They look like these:

We use Rotilab Lab Markers. They don't mention it there, but also ethanol resistant. We wipe everything we put into hood with 70% ethanol (as far as I'm aware of, this percentage is enough), so we need it. The marker will go off common plasticware if you soak it in vast amount of ethanol for some time or scrub a lot, but from tubes you can scrub off pretty anything by nature of the surface. And of course chlorophorm and phenol will wipe it out, but that on the other hand will wipe even the grading of the falcon tube and the whole white writing area (in longer time spans the falcon tube itself).
Colleagues use it on daily basis in tissue culture lab, where they wipe even more carefully and don't report any problems, obviously you shouldn't scrub it that much

It's very hard to get off glassware, but it's acetone based, so you can wipe it out easily with acetone.