Y-drive error during CORE Gripper labware movement

Hamilton (Venus)
1

Anyone seen this before? It’s particularly annoying because it forces an abort due to the y drive not being initialized after the step loss. I am wondering if:

  1. There are safeguards or techniques to avoid this error. Loosening the grip any further causes inconsistent plate handling
  2. There is error handling we could introduce to make it so we can reinitialize the drive rather than abort
  3. The iSWAP (which we have) is better suited for general labware movement even with its slower speed

Any insight helps! Thank you all in advance.

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2

When does the y drive error occur specifically? Before plate pickup? During labware movement? During plate placement? etc?

3

I had this same issue and moved to iSWAP as more reliable.

Also I’ve been told that core grips will wear down your o-rings faster.

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4

What are you trying to accomplish here? and what would be the error message in the logs and the comtrace be. This would be necessary to determine if it’s programming or hardware related

Top of my mind :

  • You are trying to reach a position that can’t be reached (Do you have 16 channels, 12 channels, camera or other handlers installed)
  • Teaching of a position?
  1. Yes, you can use " Error handling by the user" in your transport step and then write your errorhandling like you would like to have for this step.
  2. If a hardware error occurs, the system is not sure if it’s safe to move, (Like if you have a car crash, you don’t move suddenly) and it just wants to do some checks (no collision etc.) (car crash example : can I move my head, am I not split in half). → imho it’s the best way to seek for the cause of this error rather than solving it (Car crash : learn to drive rather than fitting the car with inflateable bumpers and remove trees)
  3. I have PTSD from the iSwap / IPG. → teaching an ODTC with iSwap takes 5 to 10 minutes…with core grippers 30 seconds.
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5

This may not be too helpful, but yes, it is possible to re-initialize the drives while a method is running. We’re using this in our Python SDK for the Microlab STAR series. It doesn’t use Venus though at all.

From a firmware perspective this is definitely possible.

6

Hi TonyOrega51, did you figure this out? We recently and a “Step lost on Y drive” error when trying to pickup a plate.

7

Hi all, we have found that gripping too tightly will cause the channels to flex and subsequently bind on the spindle during Y movements, throwing a Y drive error. We usually loosen the grip width by a couple .1s of mms until the error resolves. Lubricating the spindle can also help a little.