Hamilton LVK: Opinions?

Hamilton (Venus)
1

Hi all,

I am currently qualifying my liquid classes manually using gravimetry (weigh tubes, dispense, then weigh again).

I started with jet empty, but since the SURFACE DISPENSE properties are fundamentally different, I will need to qualify that as well.

The scope is quite large:

  • 3 tip types (50 µL, slim tips 300 µL, high volume 1000 µL)

  • 5 volume points per tip (e.g., for the 50 µL: 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 µL)

  • 3 replicates

  • 2 liquid handling systems

  • For PBS, serum, and ~10 additional solutions

Given this workload, I’m wondering whether the LVK is worth it… will it significantly speed up the process?

Does anyone have experience with the LVK and can share feedback?

2

If by manual you mean you are manually recording the reading on a digital scale then yes I imagine LVK is going to speed you up a lot. Think of the amount of incremental time you are spending on each measurement, it’s going to be pretty significant since it sounds like you are taking close to 1000 measurements. If you already know what parameters you’re going to test in advance and are just going to do a parameter sweep with replicates you can probably set up a script to run through a given solution and walk away, should be very convenient.

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3

Hi Stefan.

Yes, everything is manual:

For instance, to qualify my 50uL tips with PBS

weight 40 tubes using an analytic balance, get dry mass, dispense in those tubes using my LHS (dispensed volumes = 10,20,30,40,50), weight again all the tubes, calculate the dispensed volume.

Check the dispensed volume, tweak the liquid class, adjust the correction curve, repeat x times.

When good, get a triplicate for all the points, move to the next tip type (300uL slim tips). Then the 1000.

Repeat with another liquid (e.g. Serum)

Repeat everything with another dispense (i.e. Surface EMpty if I qualified Jet empty)

etc.

I thing I have done more than 20,000 manual weighings so far.

This is why I am wondering if the LVK will significantly help.

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4

for this amount of manual weighings, the LVK is a no brainer,

automated balance control

automated data upload into spreadsheet

automated report generation

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5

Out of curiosity, Would you be able to give me an estimate on the time I would be able to save?
Do we talk about 50% time reduction, 90%, 25%?

Thank you

6

It depends on how much time you’re spending on each iteration of your current process but for a predefined sweep over known parameters with the LVK you can realistically spend almost no time per individual test and only a small amount of time setting up the deck with the solution and so on.

Also if you are planning on ever doing more weight measurement experiments in the future (I’d expect you will) the benefits will continue to compound.

7

Using an LVK has been a game changer for me and I would never want to create liquid classes manually as an alternative. Just being able to validate a liquid class per dispense per channel over a number of iterations is trivial with an LVK and very error prone and tedious to do this manually. Creating a calibration curve by pipetting a series of low to high volumes gives me demonstrated confidence that the liquid class is able to pipette these volumes vs trying to back calculate differences in gravimetric measurements.

I am able to create and validate 4 liquid classes easily over the course of a day while still being able to set aside time to do other tasks as needed. An aqueous based liquid class can be created over the course of an hour especially if you’re starting from something similar.

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8

Amazing, thanks a lot for the feedback!

9

That’s great, thanks a lot!

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