Barrier materials are the cheapest things on the bench and the ones that decide whether the bench is clean. They are also the materials a studio burns through fastest, which is why a station setup is worth writing down once: what goes where, in what order, and how many of each a week actually takes.
What each one covers
| Material | Covers | Replaced |
|---|---|---|
| Barrier film | Surfaces hands will touch with gloves on: bottles, the machine's power supply, the lamp arm, the chair controls | Every client |
| Clip-cord sleeve | The cord from the power supply to the machine | Every client |
| Machine bag | The machine body and grip housing, so the machine itself never touches the field | Every client |
| Disposable grip | The part of the machine the hand holds; single-use, sterile | Every client, or per cartridge change if your protocol says so |
| Nitrile gloves | The hands | Every client, and every time they are contaminated or leave the field |
The order
- Before gloves: lay out everything the session will need, so nothing gets fetched from a drawer mid-session with contaminated hands.
- Film first. Wrap the surfaces that will be touched: bottles, power supply, lamp, chair controls. Film goes on clean surfaces, not over yesterday's film.
- Sleeve the cord, bag the machine. Sleeve from the power supply end; bag the machine so the grip end is open and the rest is closed.
- Grip and cartridge last, from sealed packaging, after the seal check.
- Gloves on only once the field is built. Gloves that built the field are not the gloves that do the work.
Between clients everything comes off in reverse and goes in the bin, then the surfaces get cleaned before the next film goes on. The film protects the surface from the session; it does not clean it.
How many a week
The honest way to size a barrier restock is to count sessions, not to guess. Every session uses one grip, one sleeve, one bag, a few pairs of gloves and a length of film; a studio that knows its sessions per week knows its barrier consumption within a box. On our Barrier sheets the burn rate is stated as an estimate per artist per week, and the Engine on the Studio page replaces it with the studio's own numbers after three restocks. Until then, count sessions.