Post-Preventative Maintenance handling of multiple Deck Layout files

Hamilton (Venus)
1

Hey all! I was hoping for some ideas regarding dealing with multiple deck layouts on a machine after preventative maintenance.

It is my practice to check the deck positions after each PM to ensure the positions were unaffected by checks/recalibrations. At my previous lab, this was easy, since we had a single universal layout that could work with all of our different methods. That isn’t possible at my current lab because of the sheer volume and variety of labware that we use, so we have a different deck layout with each of our methods. This means that every time a PM is run, if something changed, I need to do a check (and possibly reteach positions) on seven or eight different deck layout, most of which have upwards of twenty different positions.

This is obviously a pain, and it’s something I want to address. Does anyone have any clever workarounds or ideas for dealing with this kind of problem? I am open to (some) restructuring of the way the deck layouts are formatted.

1 Like
2

You could make an OQ method that you run post-pm that comprises of many different labwares across all of those decks, and checks the labwares for you by performing a pipetting action, or a move action (if its a plate + gripper combo). If this method causes a crash for any specific labware, then you know that it needs to be retaught. The variety of labware would still cause you to spend some time going back and reteaching things but instead of reteaching everything by default, maybe if you have a method you can run to check everything, that might be more ideal.