Separate waste chute FluentControl

Tecan
1

I’m trying to make a separate waste chute within my fluent software so I can throw away clean 350 uL nested tip spacers into a separate bin to then later recycle them instead of throwing them into a lab waste bin where they get incinerated.

I’ve tried duplicating the ThruDeckWaste slot that came with our device and simply placing it in another deck segment, and using the “Replace Used DiTi” racks command in a script called by the “On Empty Tray” command.

However when it exhausts a tiprack, it goes into an infinite loop trying to run my command. Has anyone else encountered this / know how to trick fluent into doing what I want?

Thanks!

2

I’d have to see the exact step to see how it’s written.

And just out of curiosity, have you tried tricking the Fluent by adding labware (empty SBS box on top of the waste chute) and then removing it once it’s transferred (aka dropped into the bin)?

This might be a more elegant way of performing that transfer.

1 Like
3

Waste chutes are the weirdest things in FluentControl. There are custom attributes for liquid, plastic, and tip waste that all need to be enabled/disabled and may or may not be copied over in the correct on/off state when duplicating labware. Additionally the actual teaching of these things is wonky and WILL cause FC to crash if you change enough with the nest/segment. Luis has the easiest solution - just trick the system and make things easier on yourself - this would likely even be more robust than using the “real” solution.

Alternatively, you might be able to add an incrementing variable (like “D”, for DiTi) within the subscript and when this variable reaches 8, or whatever max stacksize you have, enter an if/else command to add some scripting to avoid the infinite loop. Feel free to upload the .zeia (subscript and worktable, possibly labware if custom) and I’m sure we could identify some solutions!

4

I’d like to see the logfiles for the scenario where the “on empty tray” is triggered ?
i’ve successfully designed a worktable where 350 uL tips are disposed to a separate waste chute to the nested tip wafers,
but as Evan states, the waste chute parameters/back end attributes are a can of worms & duplication causes issue in the internal db structure

5

Fantastic idea Luis! I’ll give it a shot and let you know

6

Hey @luisvillaautomata, works like a charm thanks! I will avoid waste chutes whenever I can