MPH lifts up Tip Box

Hamilton (Venus)
1

Hi there,

I have encountered a serious issue with our Hamilton Vantage. At random times the MPH tends to lift up the tip box when it performs a tip pickup. This only happens with the 1000 uL tips, I assume the smaller tip diameter isn’t sufficiently large to get stuck in the frame. However, whenever this happens it leads to nasty crashes.
When I then have to abort the run the MPH will move to the back of the instrument, taking everything in its way and breaking the tip box. I already had a Hamilton technician over. He slightly adjusted the position, however, the problems persists.

I mainly have 2 questions:

  1. Is this a known problem with an easy fix my application specialist does not know?
  2. Is there a better way than aborting the run, I’m afraid to break the instrument if I have to repeat this procedure more often than absolutely necessary.

best
Dominik

2

Hi Dominik,

My apologies that you are encountering this issue. I am not aware of this being a known problem, but I am following up on this internally with experts on the consumable, and can also conduct my own tests to see if I can reproduce the issue under any circumstances.

I will follow up on this when I know more. Has service already been onsite to double check the alignment of the MPH?

Thanks.

-Nick

3

Hi Nick,

thanks for the quick reply. The system is almost new (4 months) and the alignment was checked on setup. Thanks for checking this internally, great support as always :slight_smile:

best
Dominik

4

Are you using Hamilton Branded tips? Those are good.

Some of the lessor known off brands cause this problem as their tip frames are not molded properly.

5

And if you see a 96 crash about to happen and you can not pause or stop the method, Its better to kill the power than to let the head damage itself.

6
  1. Yes, I get the tips directly from Hamilton and also have the impression that those are nice and not the problem.
  2. This is actually a good idea, however, I’m not sure if the front door will unlook if I just cut power to the device…
7

@dominik.b , @NickHealy_Hamilton actually confirmed in another post that here is not a locking mechanism or pin that will hold the loading tray closed while there is no power to the system. The loading tray is lifted by motors that will only keep the tray up while powered.

So you should be good to do so worst case!

1 Like
8

Hi Dominik,

could you please contact me for this topic so that we can help you to solve the issue

bkoch@hamilton.ch

best

Bruno

1 Like
9

Hi,

I don’t know if it’s helpful, but in Europe (production from Bonaduz) we’ve seen the same issue and after Hamilton did an investigation; it turned out one mold from Hamilton was having the wrong dimensions (when mesuring tip boxes you could see that it was too tight for 1.5mm). They’ve replaced the mold since then, but some lots/boxes are still at clients sites.
It was mainly with 300µL tip boxes though.

When we changed the lot, the issue disappeared.

Best,

10

Hi all,

thanks for the many responses, I’m in touch with multiple people at Hamilton and am confident that this issue will be soon overcome.

best
Dominik