I work in a company that develops point of care diagnostics tests. We have two OT-2 and have been able to set it up to test our chips but they are awfully slow for us and will not scale. The slowest step in the process is pipette tip dispense and pickup
We have our own “custom labware” so most off-the-shelf systems don’t seem to work and I am thinking about purchasing a Epson 6-axis/SCARA and automated pipettes to go about setting up fast test stations.
Have you come across multichannel pipettes with an independent axis for each channel?
Would the collective hive recommend any off-the-shelf robots that would be a more obvious choice?
Our biochip have stuck on wells on them without any microfluidics and are electrically connected using to wires that go out.
To my knowledge the Hamilton Nimbus is the lowest cost robot that has 8 independent channels. It’s more expensive than an OT but I think much better precision and repeatability.
Almost every liquid handler that isn’t the OT-2 has independent Z-axis channels.
The fastest tip pickup on the market is probably the Tecan Fluent with it’s zipper action.
If you want something more custom, each company has an OEM team that can work with you to meet your needs. If you want something custom that you can control and shape and evolve, check out Festo.
Edit: However not sure how fast their tip pickup may be but you can just create a monster system with many channels.
We are a team of scientists and engineers. Design our own readers and software.
I have had conversation with front line sales. Prima facie the solutions offered were inflexible and it was hard to justify development costs.
This was/is making us lean towards semi-custom solutions where we can use off-the-shelf solutions and slap together to make it work. We have to use SCARA robots and image processing for non-fluidic/manufacturing applications. We will have to learn to deal with them.
The new Hamitlon Vantages are also quite a bit faster than the STAR due to using linear magnetic actuators instead of stepper motors. Not sure how this compares to the fluent
They wanted chip spacing to match the pipette spacing and the software wouldn’t run off python. I want a semi-open platform where we have all the flexibility necessary to change our chip spacing and size. We want to be able to control most aspects of pipetting. The electronic reading and pipetting has to be synchronized it was not clear if this could be done.
That’s an awesome application and I wish more platforms had the flexibility to support that. I would get in touch with Festo in your case. I think they have some new products in the works that have that flexibility.
What’s the chip spacing, most instruments follow the minimum 9mm spacing as per a SBS format. Interweaving dispenses gets around this for 384 well and 1536 well plates, I think Hamilton calls this a serpentine dispense pattern. Though for a 1536 we have to hand teach the position of the plate due to tolerance stack of carrier’s holding the plates. Just another thought if you want to try an prebuilt instrument
Hamilton Vantage or STARv with Magpip channels must be the fastest on the market. Tip pickup and dispense up to 384 droplets (8 channels) within 20s non-contact. Any source and any target tube/plate is possible. This is for lower volumes (below 10ul I think).
so you want a variable pitch, super high speed 8 channel pipette with independent Z control. Something ideally that can go on a SCARA robot, that works on Python. What sort of pipette volumes and precision are you looking for?
Festo might not hit all those but we might be able to build something that hits a lot of the bullet points. I’d love to talk about exactly what you’re trying to do - any chance you’re going to be at SLAS in two weeks?