Key features
Overview
The liquid transfer system uses two XY robots, each Y axis has 4 needles for dispensing. The needles are pneumatically actuated and work in tandem to move liquid from the input pots to the output tubes. The liquid is transferred using peristaltic pumps, which move the required liquid volume at a speed that ensures the sample does not get broken up before flushing the tubing with air; this ensures minimal crossover. The design of the process also minimises crossover by flushing the tubes with a small amount of the sample to the drain between each sample. To make the system as easy to operate as possible it uses light curtains which remove power from the actuators when a user breaks the curtain. It does however maintain communications to ensure it can be quickly restarted once the next set of samples are loaded. This is combined with the multiple axis to ensure a very high throughput resulting in 64 samples being processed in 7 minutes.