Partial tip pickup with p300 multi

Opentrons
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Hello friends,

I just joined a lab with a three year old OT-2 that has never been used and I am trying to familiarize myself with it. I have quite a bit of robotics experience and I’m good with Python so I’ve been using the Python API. So far I’ve built a few different protocols and things seem to be working fine.

However I am in a bind for pipettes. I have a p20 single and a p300 multi and I need to also do some single wells for volumes too large to use the P20. So I’d like to use the p300 with just one or two tips in place.

I am wondering if it is possible to use the p300 multi to pick up fewer than 8 tips at a time by offsetting the pipette when it goes to retrieve a tip. Is this something that can be done through the Python API.

Or do I just have to re-organize the tip box to leave out the tips in the positions that I don’t want picked up. That’s what I am doing now but it seems like this robot should be able to pick up tips on only one side of the pipette.

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Hey @Delta_G - this functionality will be released in our 8.0 software release September 23rd!

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Awesome! That’s soon. I’ll stop hacking and wait for that.

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There was a pretty hacky way to do it, but the volumes were uneven across channels, so we’re making it a core feature of the API :slight_smile:

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I found this page

but it only talks about assigning the tip racks and makes no mention of how to actually do the pickup. Was maybe something left out here?

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This is quite an old article and not supported in the API. The new software, 8.0 release, comes out next week.

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Hi Meghan. Did the new software get released? Where can I go to download it? Where can I find out how to do partial pickup of tips?

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Hey @Delta_G - a bit delayed due to the down site… yes, this has been released! Just update your software and robot to 8.0.0.

Here’s some documentation on partial tip pickup:

Let me know if you have any issues!

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Thanks! I played with it some Thursday and Friday and i got it working. This week I’m going to work on the csv files. That will be the key to our workflow I think.

Ome thing I missed was the tip boxes get lost when you change the nozzle layout. You have to add it back each time if you are going back and forth between single and all. But that’s pretty easy to keep up with.

Thanks for your help.

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Meghan,

Thank you so much for your help. I have to say the folks at Opentrons have been super helpful as I get on my feet with this robot. I wish Tecan was a tenth as responsive as you guys have been. Five stars for customer support.

I uploaded some of the scripts that I am working on to github and I wanted to share so you could see what your effort helped to produce. I will come back in the next few days and add some documentation so they might make more sense after that.

The Breakdown.py script makes use of both the new features. It uses a CSV file that is loaded when the protocol starts to define where the different projects are in the source plate and how they should be arranged in the destination plates. It also uses the 8 channel pipette as a single channel because these plates are layed out horizontally.

Couldn’t have done it without you!

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So happy you have everything up and running, please never hesitate to reach out!