Curious, what are you doing on a BioMek that can’t be replicated on other systems by now?
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I suppose it‘s not really a question of technical feasability but rather user friendliness and over time a kind of intuition working with the biomek software. thats why I personally would always choose biomek over hamilton for example…
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I have always loved Biomek instruments and, to some degree, the software. What I have previously not loved is Beckman’s closed support structure for both hardware and software. It always seemed to me that they wanted to force you to use them for hardware and software support (including script writing). Software support especially frustrated me. In my experience, companies like Hamilton and Tecan are much more open about what is possible and empowering the owner/user of the instrument to write and develop their own custom scripting. For Biomek the more complicated things seemed to be hidden and Beckman was not forthcoming on allowing the customer to develop and write their own scripts with no involvement from Beckman.
Perhaps that’s changed, I hope it has.
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it‘s a trade off I think. For what I see, specially with hamilton, are hordes of sales and other specialists beating a path to your door whether you want this or not. but, on the other hand, offer little when it comes to customer-controlled applications…
Any company who has any of this liquid handling equipment with any expectation of developing additional uses in their labs should also budget for an internal engineer to learn, maintain, optimize, and be an overall champion for the platforms. In many cases these are sold with a fixed set of deliverables, perhaps a method or two and once those are met the additional apps/development time is never inexpensive when it is available at all.
There are also a growing number of very capable third party resources around as well.
Just my thoughts.
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100% agree.
In our lab we have enough kit that splitting the operational (inc protocol development/ optimisation) and the engineering tasks into two roles makes sense, and has over time allowed us to not only increase our knowledge and understanding of our devices but also reduced our reliance on the factory for all but the most difficult problems.
For us, mandating advanced operational and engineering training as part of the instrument’s must-have requirements is just as important as any other component on the device. There are plenty of players in the market; if one manufacturer isn’t willing to take you on this journey, then don’t be afraid to exercise your purchasing power and find one who will.
This isn’t meant to be a rant for the right to repair, but the business model of some companies is to keep as much as they can out of the general user’s reach, and given the opportunity they will leverage your new purchase for the next +10yrs to maintain a revenue stream that in dollar terms will dwarf the initial purchase price of the instrument.
Forums like this are excellent and are a useful way for users to share information and find solutions to problems that we would otherwise struggle to solve on our own.
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Hi All. I wanted to follow up on this. We have since received a new lot of tips (P42371), and are lucky that these seem to be working properly. These all looked ok on the simple tip pickup/drop off test, and then proceeded to work well for 2 larger full 4 hour runs that we did where we watched the runs very closely. There was both less wobble and less tip box compression compared to the 2 bad lots that we went through. I’m cautiously optimistic moving forward for this lot. I will be sure to report back if i run into any issues with this particular lot.
Having said that, until I hear from Beckman Coulter that they have definitively identified the exact root cause of the issue, I will continue to test all new lots of tips, and ask the team in the lab to monitor the first couple of runs to ensure that we have confidence in them moving forward.
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Hi All. I wanted to report a few more lots that i have found to cause issues. BC50F Tip Lot # P40179 was found to have tip shucking issues in our experience, and we recently have had issues with tip pickups on our Multichannel head with BC190F Lot # P36103 (manufactured Dec 2021).
New tips seem to be working fine, but I remain skeptical of any tip lot made in from late 2021 to mid 2023.
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resurrecting this thread: seeing this semi-regularly with tip lot P44586 of the BC190F’s : it happens more often when doing offset tip-loads of less than 12 columns of tips. I’m seeing the tipbox pickup behavior described by many up-thread 
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We have had quite a few pickups with recent lots as well sadly.
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I used to see this a lot on my Biomek i5/i7 MC heads. This does come into effect due to tip lots and various overall lab conditions (humidity, instrument position teaching, etc.).
However, I did notice that due to the intense amount of force being placed on the tip boxes that the base plates of the instrument is actually effected in this process, and is more than likely being warped over time. The silver TLP reinforcement plates added on top of the regular single ALP protects the top of the ALP, but the force is eventually distributed down to the bottom deck plate that the ALP is connected to. Depending on where the TLP is located on the deck, it most likely will bow to either the left or right during tip loading, causing the entire TLP to tilt to that respective side during the process, and therefore creating enough friction between the tips and their respective tip boxes they are in to cause them to be lifted with the tips during loading. @sclarkson I would guess that this effect is exacerbated by offset tip loads. I never got a chance to investigate this further as I have since moved to my current company, but if you find the same thing happening during tip loading, it might be a big factor of your root cause of tip box pick-ups.
I was always curious whether putting something under the base plate (say, a block of plastic or even a spare 2x4 wedged between the Biomek’s bottom bench plate and the lab bench it rests on) to reinforce those instrument deck plates would help with evening out the application of pressure to of the MC head while loading tips.
As for simpler solutions, we were able to 3D print some flexible tip box holders that held the boxes down so that the tips could be pulled out without the boxes being lifted with them. I do not have the 3D print files as I am no longer with that company, but the design was simple enough where only a small amount of gripping force was required to hold the boxes in place during tip loading.
Unfortunately, the adding these tip-box-holders prevented loading boxes INTO TLP positions using the Instrument’s gripper. The bright side of that is the combination of our 3D printed design and the grip strength of the Biomek Instrument’s own grippers still allowed for the Biomek to lift the boxes OUT of their respective positions if you wanted to move them post-tip loading. Our design of the 3D printed tip-box holders was flexible enough where they were not damaged in this process.
Let me know what you think, always love to brainstorm Biomek solutions!
-Doug
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Add BC190F non-capacitive Lot 44996 to the list of problematic tips.
Offset pickup >3 columns led to the entire tipbox hitching a ride along with the tips. With this lot, this issue is completely reproducible and not sporadic.
However, BC was very quick to provide replacement tips after confirming the lot number was affected. I would much prefer a recall notice to prevent any lost runs, but at least there was a protocol in place to replace affected reagents.
per @gobron.d I’ll see if I can find a spirit level and check the tip locator for any deflection. Worth a look, though my instrument is only ~2 years old.
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Resurrecting this thread because it’s still relevant. We should just keep this pinned until Beckman gets their act together. Tip loading hasn’t been an issue, but tip shucking is an ongoing struggle on our Span-8 systems across all platforms. We switched over to Axygen tips for our P50 & P20 tip boxes for that reason. We recently had a issue where our i7 & FXP both lifted tip boxes off the deck on the multichannel head on the same day!
@JiggyDancer Agreed! Do you have lot #s that you know are problematic that you can share here?
P45580 - P200 tips were lifted off the deck on both our i7 & FXP multichannel heads.
Vote w/ your wallet, buy Axygen tips. They’ve been working well for me.
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Crazy that 3rd party tips are working better than Beckman’s own brand which are undoubtedly more expensive to begin with.
They’re made by Corning. They’re not amateurs at this.
I’ve also used Three-Part Conductive Tips (P50) and Clear Tips (P50, P190, P1025) from another company for about 2 years, and they have worked very well
Do you have the name the company? I am looking for alternative tips for my Biomek i7/i5. I have samples of the corning tips that are supposed to be Biomek compatible, but it makes a loud thunk noise when loading onto the 96 well head.