Visible crew/equipment: When Call spills Jona's 'battery acid' drink, she throws the boxing gloves on the table. When she does, they bump the camera. (00:28:15)
Visible crew/equipment: After Ron Perlman has uttered the line "f***ing waste of ammo" in the clone room there is a shot that starts at ground level and rises up. You can see a ray of light heading towards the left of the picture being obliterated by the camera's shadow as it rises.
Visible crew/equipment: When the android is connecting to the ship, in a lot of close ups what looks like a stage lamp is reflected in her eyes. There wasn't anything in the room that looked like that.
Answer: This is just speculation (and I haven't watched the movie for ages) but the operation is done with medical equipment in a facility designed for studying Aliens, which the military knows a little about. Maybe it is made of futuristic acid proof material.
If the surgical tools were acid proof, surely the floors of the cells that contain the grown alien specimens would also be acid proof. But that is how they escape: by sacrificing one of their own in order to spill acid blood onto the floor.
Well, you can imagine any acid-proof metal is probably very expensive. They can't make the entire station out of that stuff. Surgical equipment is probably necessary for their research, so they make an exception.
lionhead