In my new position, I am starting to design our automation platform from scratch and have the option to go with either a Tecan or Hamilton liquid handler. I am fairly familiar with capabilities of Hamilton Vantages and STARs having developed multiple workflows in Venus over the past few years, but my knowledge of Tecans software and hardware is limited. I am however motivated and have support to learn a new system if the juice is worth the squeeze.
We will be doing basic combinatorial pipetting to set up small volume fermentation reactions, normalizations, colony picking, and enzyme assays to start off but anticipate additional workflows in the future so flexibility is a plus. I am told that colony picking is not available on the Vantage platform yet, so it looks like I will need to choose between a Hamilton STAR and a Tecan Fluent.
If anyone with experience regarding these liquid handlers could share their insight about relative cost, post sale support, ease of programming, software capabilities, ease of peripheral integration, or any additional info that may be helpful in making a call between a Hamilton STAR and a Tecan Fluent, I would love to hear it!
SciRobotics Scirobotics Pickolo can be used for picking on Tecan instruments (never used so I can’t vouch for the hardware, but @Shaik can probably answer some questions for you!)
If you’re doing colony picking on a liquid handler, just be aware that the consumable burn can get pretty crazy pretty fast. This might make Tecan a slightly more attractive option due to cheaper 3rd party tips, but an additional dedicated picking instrument might make more sense once you sit down and do the math (check out this thread for some great responses I got when I asked this question.)
As far as support, I’ve had great experience with the Hamilton folks (many of whom are very active here!) and so so experience with Tecan folks, but this will probably depend a lot on your region.
If you’ve already got Hamilton experience and like what you’ve seen, my personal opinion is that you’d probably be best served sticking with that since you’ve already conquered the learning curve. You can achieve similar results and get way under the hood with both, but the strategies are different and not necessarily transferrable. As far as Tecans, I’ve only worked with EVOs, but I know there’s a wealth of Fluent knowledge here, I’ve seen posts from @luisvillaautomata@MikeMueller and @smohler, so they might be able to chime in!
First off, I totally vouch for SciRobotics which makes the colony picking solution in the Tecan Fluent and Evo platforms (along with other image-based technologies like blood layer separation, also Petri plating). They are a small group of extremely capable software guys and also provide really top notch customer support. Shai Kaplan is phenomenal!
The Fluent platform is outstanding. Generally, in my experience, the Fluent software will require significantly fewer lines of script to accomplish a task than programming a similar workflow in Venus. But it sounds like you’ve already overcome the Venus learning curve which is typically a significant part of the calculus.
Cost wise typically a STAR will cost less for the instrument than a Fluent but tip cost on Hamilton may be higher. But it’s important keep in mind the STAR and Evo are more in the same class, whereas the Fluent and Vantage are in similar classes, so comparing Fluent to STAR is not exactly an apples to apples comparison.
Just wanted to quickly add during lunch @PhilAuto that I love the way you’re thinking about this decision. You’re looking for the best tool for your challenges and sometimes the best tool isn’t necessarily what you’re the best at or most familiar with. Furthermore, oftentimes people try to bend those familiar tools to their whim in ways that don’t make sense and it ends up causing a whole new set of issues. This is where sometimes dedicated equipment is the way to go.
If and when you reach out to vendors, be upfront about what you’re trying to do. The more honest and the more you share, the better equipped they will be to give you feedback about what they can offer out of the box. They may even reveal a bit about things in the pipeline/roadmap that can help you out in 6 months -1 year.
Also want to quickly add that SciRobotics tools are incredible, I’m always looking forward to what @Shaik and the team will build in the future!
@evwolfson Any thoughts on this subject? I know that you’ve used both. I’ve also used both but I’ll need some time to write up my thoughts tbh.
Having worked with both platforms in small workcells to big integration projects there is really not much to separate the two. I was in the same position ten years ago having only worked on Hamiltons and then switched to mainly using Tecan’s. Disclaimer I currently work for Tecan.
I have often favoured the Tecan’s as I have built up more knowledge on making the system do exactly what I need them to do, in terms of movement and speed. Plus it feels more like an open programming platform for integration so I have never felt limited in application or completely reworking a machine for something completely different.
I find the Tecan’s easier to pass on to others to refine and validate protocols. In the past I have been stuck in companies as the only person to do validation work on Hamiltons and the UI put people off from even trying to learn.
On that note the EVO and Fluent software is licensed free for offline use so you should be able to get hold of an early version to freely play around and learn with a simulated instrument. This is how I learn to program Tecans when I was making the switch from Hamiltons.
Note it takes a bit of setup to simulate but I am pretty sure anyone in the Tecan service groups would happily help you out remotely. For me it was the best way to learn, build universal worktable and test out process for optimisation.
TL:DR I’d likely go with Hamilton unless you have an insider on the Tecan side of things, such as an FAE colleague or open source of communication with one of the Tecan scripting legends who can solve anything and everything.
I’d echo everything @HarenArul said - also with the caveat that I think it’s way easier to learn Hamilton then Tecan rather than the other way around. Those sequences are hard to conceptualize after using direct source->destination scheme like what’s on EVOware/FluentControl
Tecan is great. Their UI is fantastic; a lot of overengineered swiss-german genius is forefront when you start working on their systems. I also tend to gravitate towards Tecan since that forms the larger part of my personal experience. However, I think there’s such an insurmountable gap in Tecan knowledge that is hidden away in the Te-Wiki and it’s completely inaccessible to actual customers. The information in that wiki is so absolutely crucial to high-level functionality and understanding that it just feels like anyone who wasn’t previously an FAE is fighting an uphill battle. Hamilton, on the other hand, is fairly free with their knowledge sharing (e.g., this forum) with the understood caveat that “you need to be careful with advanced commands” whereas Tecan takes the “You can’t break it if you don’t know how” approach. Point Hamilton.
If you end up talking to either vendor, try to find an applications specialist or engineer and have a candid chat about capabilities. Maybe ask them directly about how they would strategize implementing a solution to your particular problem or lab process. If you ask if something is possible or easy, sales people will generally say “yes” to just about everything; It’s different when you talk to the folks that actually have to turn “yes” into a tangible solution.
Also +1 for @Shaik - I’ve had the pleasure of crossing paths with him several times in my career. The products are phenomenal and the support is equally amazing. True undisputed professionals at work.
Tecan’s internal knowledge base. It’s amazing, but completely off-limits to outsiders - not without good reason as there’s likely proprietary knowledge and/or really reliable ways to break things.
Te-Wiki an internal knowledge base and is a way FAS and FSE can update on in field fixes or report on novel fixes or best practices. It is internal use as it has confidential information but from my experience if you ask the Helpdesk, FAS or FSE they are happy to share focused information to resolve an issue.
Like any database search you just need it ask the right question or log a service ticket for someone to seek this out. You just cannot be published technical assessment to the public as they can be misinterpreted or misused to invalid a warranty.
Tecan have recently built a more public version where some of the most up voted TeWiki content is being posted as documents or webinars: Tecan Knowledge Portal
However, it needs some customer driven feedback to help direct content like any platform. So please feel free to feedback.
As a side I would also sign up for free to the recent release Tecan Academy Global Teach where more webinars and online training is being centralised for customer and employees. This is all an effort based on customer feedback to provide more information about systems and access to training videos. I will try and also put links in the Automation Wiki as it seem not to be common knowledge these resources exist.
Have you made a decision on what system you will go with?
We’ve got the Fluent 780 with the Scirobotics Pickolo & Petriplater. It has been a learning curve for me, especially wrt vectors for plate stacking. Once I got the logic right, the system has done what I want it to, picking 880 colonies to 10x 96-DWP.
Does anyone here have experience with the Petriplater? This is my next challenge to focus on.
Hamilton is harder to learn than Tecan software. If you’re looking for an easier platform with similar capabilities it doesn’t exist. You’ll have to sacrifice ease of use or capabilities in my experience. If you want more training I have an offering you may benefit from
Liquid handlers in general take time to learn their software. If you wanted the option of programming them easier then I’d highly recommend you take a look at Synthace.
of course . Synthace makes designing experiments and executing them on Tecans and Hamiltons much easier - especially when you need to be dynamic and constantly iterating on your experiment within R&D.
I won’t go to any other lab unless they have Synthace because I am not going back to the old ways of writing scripts. Those days of being a lonely automation scientist sitting in the lab glued to the PC are done.
Well, I wouldn’t look at it like that. I’ve been at places where expensive liquid handlers don’t get used at all so actually the investment in a 6 figure liquid handler is wasted. Too many times I’ve seen automation scientists come and bring in a suite of devices, then they leave and no-one uses it…
It’s a balance, do you employ a single automation scientist and their job is to just program mundane scripts and get bombarded by scientists for every single change.
Or…do you democratise automation and get other scientists who have never used automation before to use it and get excited.
If you are going to build one single script and constantly run it day in and day out then no Synthace isn’t going to be valuable. But…if you need to change scripts on a daily/weekly basis and want to get other scientists actually using the liquid handler then that’s where something like Synthace can be useful.
I completely agree, I think we’ve all expressed frustration at liquid-handler UIs before. If a software helps scientists run experiments without having to learn a complicated new system orthogonal to their existing skill set, that seems like a win. The phenomenon of valuable robots going unused because no one on a team can program them is very common.
I think this plays a part, but to be fair I think another common reason for the " no one uses it" problem is the misunderstanding the initial needs and not picking the right tool for the right job.
I agree with @luisvillaautomata initial post. You can have have sometime like Synthace running over a Tecan/Hamilton to make the UI easier, but if you have the smallest deck size and you want full walkaway time, need to process 10 plates at a time, and need to dispense 0.1 uL, even a great UI is not going to solve that problem, and will leave lab personnel frustrated and that instrument underutilized. At minimum thats a reason to have someone with automation experience around, to make sure a serious assessment of tools can be made and properly communicate expectations with the lab that is going to take one of these on.
@MikeMueller in my experience I’ve seen the opposite where Tecan tips are more expensive than Hamilton tips. If you’re willing to play around with 3rd party tips, Tecan will be easier to do this with than Hamilton, especially with the newer CO-RE II channels.
I also agree with @evwolfson that Hamilton sequences can make some pattern based pipetting much easier that having to use some more complicated looping structures with Tecans’s the direct source->destination scheme. I personally found Evoware easier to initially learn, but that may be just because its what I learned first. At least for Tecan Evoware Software for Hamilton Venus software, Tecan is probably easier for simpler things, but if you start getting into complex data handling or need to do really complicated things, you have more tools in your toolbox for Hamilton.
Service wise, it really depends on how far you are from civilization and how your local field apps team is. Ive had great experiences for the most part for sites closer to civilization, but for more remote sites there are always struggles to get someone out onsite when needed in a time efficient manner, especially if you don’t have a fleet of instruments at that site.
