MICROPLATE READERS
MICROPLATE INNOVATION SHOWCASED P
orvair Sciences showcased its recently extended ranges of ultra-clean deep well and assay microplates for the first time in Europe at the recent Lab Innovations 2019 exhibition. Krzysztof Kielmann at Porvair Sciences
says: “We offer ultra-clean deep well plates in a large range of formats, well shapes and volumes. Researchers can now work with volumes as low as 1ml and as high as 2.2ml, each with different well and bottom shapes. Whether customers are working in molecular biology, cell biology or drug discovery applications, these high quality deep well plates offer customers greater flexibility to select an optimised ANSI/SLAS dimension compliant plate to suit their application.” He adds: “Our Krystal series clear bottom
assay plates are recognised as leading cell culture tools by many pharma drug discovery and screening labs. Available in
a choice of 24-, 96- and 384-well formats, these clear polystyrene bottom plates have bases just 0.4mm thick and are moulded from highly polished tools to reduce flow lines, artefacts and scratches, guaranteeing excellent results with all types of bottom-reading instruments. In response to customer demand, our complete
range of Krystal clear bottomed assay microplates are now available individually packed and sterilised for optimised tissue culture cell growth or non-sterile for assay development.” Also at Lab Innovations 2019, the
company demonstrated products that enable automation facilities to optimise sample preparation and improve productivity. These include the Ultravap Mistral – a product designed to remove the traditional laboratory ‘bottleneck’ of solvent evaporation from microplates, the Universal Robotic Manifold for productive automation of SPE or DNA clean-up procedures and the new AutoCapper – designed to take the strain out of applying friction sealing caps to deep well plates and tube racks.
For more information visit
www.porvairsciences.com
ROBOTIC MICROPLATE HANDLING SYSTEM
icroplates are rectangular blocks of plastic that contain an array of test tubes. Standard in the laboratory, these plates vary in size from 96 wells to 1,536 wells. Customers, such as pharmaceutical, biotech, research institutes and universities throughout the world incorporate microplates in their processes. They typically stack the microplates and hand load each one into a processing instrument, which can take a lot of time, making employees stand for long periods of time.
M Peak Analysis and Automation (PAA)
provides S-Lab, an automated plate handler that frees workers to perform more important tasks. The company has created its Overlord scheduling software for laboratory automation, which allows automation of workcells containing one to over 20 scientific instruments with one or more robotic arms. PAA’s S-Lab plate handler automatically detects how many microplates are loaded into a stack, then picks up the plate, and moves it to the connected instrument. At the end of the operation, S-Lab will again pick up the microplate and move it to the output stack, continuing this process repeatedly until it has processed all the plates through the instrument. The gripper for the
S-Lab incorporates a customised version of maxon’s DCX motor and gearbox combination with a pinion attached to the
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motor shaft. These brushed DC drives provide high-power operations through the use of high-performance magnets. The motors use precious metal or graphite brushes, can be equipped with standard preloaded ball bearings or sintered bearings, and cover a large voltage range with six different ironless windings. The motors are configurable online with almost all mechanical configurations available. For use in small spaces, the DCX motor is also available in a short configuration without a flange. The simple open and close operation
of the gripper, using the DCX motor, can handle loads from 50g to 500g, providing a secure grip on the microplate. The key criteria for the motion system was reliability – it is never acceptable to drop customer samples during important lab tests – although product cost was very important. PAA found that maxon’s customer support and competitive pricing provided it with the confidenceit needed to make the best choice for the S-Lab automated plate handler.
For more information visit
www.maxongroup.com
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