Our group is considering purchasing one of these instruments. There seem to be a lot of ways this instrument can be configured (balance, decapper, labeling, etc.) but we are primarily interested in the ability to pick/place tubes from one rack to another.
On paper the instrument looks like it may be capable of meeting our needs. I’m curious to know if anyone has had any real world experience with this platform?
I’ve used their XL20 with a labeling integration. My past company had two XL20 with the printers. I really liked it. Be aware that the labeling integration takes up additional space and will take up deck space.
When you order, you need to be specific about your use case and they setup the instrument to work with your tube types and caps.
I really liked how you can feed it a worklist and it will label tubes according to that worklist. If you had a worklist that exceeded the capacity of the deck it will prompt the user during the run that it can be reloaded with more plates of tubes. It exceeds extremely well with tube handling and moving tubes from one rack to another.
@bowlineknot Thank you for your valuable input. It is interesting to hear that if a worklist exceeds the deck capacity that it will prompt the user to reload.
We have two requirements that might end up making the implementation difficult to achieve. The first is that some of our racks are high density (64 and 138 positions in SBS format). The second is keeping the racks near -80c. It sounded like the XL can accommodate some high density labware but we’re waiting to get clarification. There is also a third party add-on for sample cooling by Mecour.
I’ve only used it with screw cap and septum seals on 500uL, 1000uL, and 1400uL matrix tubes in 96 format. I haven’t had experience with 64 or 138 positions in SBS format.
For keeping the racks near -80C, I’ve heard of people putting the XL20 in the walk in fridge/freezer and running it there. Looks like its rated to -4C depending on the model you get.
