Automated Colony Pickers

Process Engineering
21

You are correct. I’ve not looked closely at the this. I will have a look at where the LLD and Z-positions are linked.

22

If I could do things over, I’d have gone with a couple Singer PIXLs instead of a QPix. As long as you don’t need QTrays, you could buy 2-3 instruments for less than the cost of a QPix (~300k+) and achieve the same throughput based on some napkin math. The folks at Singer were great when I chatted with them both in some demo calls and at SLAS.

23

Uneven Agar is not a problem for the Singer PIXL - It uses very precise pressure sensors to detect the surface of the Agar/Colonies. Additionally, you can easily set the length of the PickUp line so that if your working with a particularly squishy sample, you can guarantee it wont contaminate the feed head. Hope that helps! - Full disclosure, I work for Singer Instruments! - Edward

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24

hi everyone, I was talking to a colleague and they want to automate picking from big bioassay plates 245x245. I told them that to my knowledge there is no colony picker that can pick from these. But i thought to ask just in case..

25

I would contact SciRobotics. I don’t see why they couldn’t pick from something that large as long as it fits within the field of vision of the camera. It’d be a custom labware and you wouldn’t be able to move it around with a Tecan RoMa, but otherwise it’d probably be OK.

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26

thank you for the response, I do not have a tecan in my current post, however the plan is to get a hamilton and equip it with the easypick module. One issue though is the light table? Do you think that’d be an issue?

I have used pickolo on our evo in a previous job. I liked it!

27

I’d say the light table is a bigger issue than the size of the plate. You can always, for example on a STAR, put several small plates on a deck layout to cover the entirety of the real, big plate. However, having a big enough light source that will evenly illuminate a big plate is a different thing. You might actually need to head to your local arts and crafts supplier to get a light table they use for tracing :grin:

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