Hello, I wanted to get some feedback regarding low volume liquid dispensers. I don’t have much experience in this area, basically all I know for sure is that Echos are the high end, most commonly used, reliable systems. Are there any other systems that are worthy of consideration for dispensing DMSO stock solutions? I am aware of the I.DOT but I’ve never met anyone who actually purchased and integrated it into their workflow. The use case here would be for preparing assay plates. I’m mostly interested in learning about alternatives to the Echo and whether they are worth the time/effort/cost to use. Thanks!
Echoes are high maintenance and expensive. MANTIS units exist and apparently work quite well now. DMSO/MANTIS should work well together.
Typical mantis chips use silicone diaphragms to move liquids. Silicone and DMSO do not get along and the diaphragms will get damaged. You’ll need the PFE chips to do this which they do sell. If you try and use the standard chips you’re going to have a bad time.
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How many different DMSO stock solutions are we talking about? If it’s more than just a few the Mantis is not an option.
I have an I.DOT and it’s OK, but if your need is dispensing small molecules in DMSO solutions and you have a library of those the I.DOT won’t be ideal. You can’t store any samples in the I.DOT plates directly, you’ll have to dispense your library into the I.DOT source plate and either aspirate them back out to keep them or just throw away the plate. So this adds an additional step for library dispensing that you wouldn’t have for an Echo.
Check out Lab-Machines if you want to explore an Echo further. The company is mostly made up of former Labcyte employees and they refurbish, sell, and support second-hand Echos. You may find their Echos to be more affordable that you think.
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