Standard size punches: 0.6 mm diameter

Advantages:

  • less damage to the donor block
  • more samples from any given donor
  • more samples in any given recipient block
  • easiest to remove the cores from the donor blocks
  • easiest to remove the blank cores from the recipient block

Custom-size punches: 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 mm diameter

Advantages:

  • More robust, harder to damage (e.g., during training)
  • Larger individual sample size

Potential Disadvantages:

  • A tiny fraction of users have reported blocks broken by the larger punches.
  • A larger but still small fraction of users have reported difficulty in removing cores from blocks when using the larger punches.