Over the past 5 years or so a number of liquid handlers with integrated robotic arms and equipment cabinets have come on to the market. Personally I have experience working with a Vantage system, and my experience has been mostly good. I’ve listed some Pros and Cons below. I’d like to hear about other systems like this (Tecan, Beckman, etc.) and how reliable/useful the standard robotic arms are.
Vantage Pros:
- For short methods the Track Gripper is typically reliable
- Engineers are generally available to take a look at the system on short notice
- Spare parts are covered by service agreement and typically arrive in ~1 week
- All components in my system are from Hamilton, so there were no struggles to integrate pieces from various vendors, and no need to have scheduling software
Vantage Cons:
- Track gripper tends to error out on longer runs requiring multiple plate moves - makes me nervous to create overly long or complex methods, and recovering from an error can become burdensome
- As far as I can tell there is no PM service - arm components can be recalibrated on request if they’re causing an issue, but no preventative maintenance is being done.
- Over 3 years we’ve had to replace multiple parts of Track Gripper as they’ve malfunctioned, which worries me in terms of its longevity/reliability