My colleagues in the Boston area recently purchased a Tecan Fluent for cell culture purposes. I’ve suggested that they either hire someone permanent, use Tecan’s internal dev team, or hire a consultant. They’ve said that hiring someone full time is not an option but they will consider both of the other options.
What I suggested to them is to have a consultant come in and script the protocols that are needed and train the users on running those protocols as well as general troubleshooting of the instrument. The protocols should be fairly simple to script and design initially but will get more complicated as they utilize the instruments for more processes. Ideally the consultant would be local in the Boston area or at least someone who travels to Boston on a regular basis.
PM me if you’re interested in more information about the opportunity!
Thanks. Responded back to John directly. We do both instrument programming and training. Working on Tecan Fluent since launch in 2014, ex-Tecan senior application scientist. Nucleus Automation Partners LLC www.nucleus-automation.com
we offer both in-house script development (on one of our test Fluent) platforms & onsite support, FluentControl driver development, liquid class optimizations, hardware servicing, technical support, full workflow design on our instrumentation as part of Factory Acceptance testing approach - then implement on client’s system after verification/workflow review
breaking down automation hurdles one at a time
if anyone else is looking for in-depth Fluent expertise from ex Tecan Apps specialist who worked with Fluent since 2009, pls reach out (2009 - before it was actually a Fluent, pop quiz - anyone remember the platform name before “Fluent”)
I worked at Tecan first as a field engineer, and then as an applications scientist, on the same team in the mid 2010s with Daniel (currently Optimize) and Mike (Currently Nucleus). I offer similar services and have some availability for onsite or remote work. I specialize in Genomics and Cell Culture workflows, having automated many such workflows when I worked on the bench at Synthetic Genomics, Tecan, and independently as a consultant. Please message me for references and list of services. https://www.labautomatic.com/ - joe@labautomatic.com
Thanks for the referral Evan!
I’m also an ex-Tecan from waaaay back. I’ve since started a liquid handling consulting company based in the Boston area working on all kinds of platforms including the Fluent. Reach out if you want more information.
If I remember the story correctly, it was initially VisionX hence the ProgramData folder. Since Tecan was in the race for 1st next gen liquid handler, they rushed a lot of things as everyone else did. Anecdote, but I heard that development was so rushed that the liqFCA would drip liquid during moves until FC version 1.3 or something. I’ve worked with a few Fluent betatesters who confirmed that there were some shoddy aspects, such as the early versions of the FluentID. Similar stories from Hamilton with the difficulties seen by instinct launch and adaptation.
Anyways, late in development but early in manufacturing, the name was changed to Myrius and adopted into production. From how I was told, it was a very last minute and on-a-whim decision to go forward with Fluent. Not sure what the impetus was, but they basically were only able to implement superficial changes like software name since the larger aspects of the build were concrete at that point. For some reason I feel like it was within a month of launch when they made this change - but I don’t know if that’s my imagination or something I was told.
I don’t perfectly remember but I pieced together stories and tidbits from a combo of Mike Asham, Karl Angermeier, and Calvin Louie who told me all this to different extents - and maybe one or two snippets from Mark Stamper and the head of TIG when it became Labwerx… Can’t recall his name.
So don’t leave us hanging! What’s the other two names? I don’t have a Fluent in my lab currently but have worked with a lot of them in the past, otherwise I’d go look at the power supply.
p.s. @jnecr I hope you were able to discuss your issue and solution with a few consultants! We sort of lost sight about the original discussion here and took a dive into Tecan lore.
. That’s why early adopters are called “lab automation champions”, I’m sure every early adopter has their story.