Echo 655 missed transfers that are not exceptions

I’m seeing a strange failure mode recently on our Echo 655 where there appear to be many “missed” transfers. There are no listed exceptions in any of the reports, but there are clear outlier wells from our control samples that seem as though no sample was transferred. We’re noticing this across a couple of different labware types, but it’s limited to the left side of the destination plates. In my 7 years of working with Echoes i’ve never seen this and am wondering if anyone else has come across this.

One of the few times we had problems with Echo transfers was when we had problems with the source plates coming from a different mold. Are you buying your source plates from Labcyte/Beckman? Or do you buy directly from Greiner? If from Greiner make sure they are the correct mold numbers, they have a few molds that produce the same plates and some of them are not flat enough to use the plates on the Echos.

put a pcr seal on the destination plate if it’s nL range transfers and see that if the droplets are aligned to the center of the well…droplets may be ending up on the side of the well and not transferring to the assay…could be an issue with the de-ionizer, could be an issue with destination definition or source well calibration…but it’s easy to confirm with a sealed plate to rule out other possible issues.