Equipment

Molecular Devices AquaMax DW4

The AquaMax DW4 is a pressurized combination small volume liquid dispenser and microplate washer that can be configured to 96-, 384-, or 1536-well format. The system contains four separate reagent manifolds enabling the creation of dispensing protocols using four different dispense and wash parameters. The flexibility of the system allows the user to change the aspirate height for low volume wells, adjust the dispense volume to add different volumes in selected rows, and increase or decrease dispense speeds for liquids of differing viscosity. Currently it’s setup to dispense 0.5 – 150uL in 384-well format and has been used for HTS.

Asys Flexispense

The Flexispense is a microtitre plate liquid dispenser for 384- and 1536-well format with a dispensing volume range of 2µL to 2.5mL (accuracy = <5% CV/6uL). It can be integrated into the SAGIAN robotic system and has an overall dispensing speed of  <10 seconds for a 384-well plate.

Thermo Scientific Multidrop Reagent Dispenser

With this instrument, reagents can be rapidly and accurately added to both 96- and 384-well plates. Volumes ranging from 5µL to 100µL per well (in 5µL increments) can be dispensed with minimal variation across a plate. Discovery Biology possesses numerous Multidrop dispensers, which are primarily utilized for high throughput screening, but also for assay development.

Tecan PowerWasher 384

The Tecan PW384 is an automated benchtop plate washer for cellular and ELISA assays and operates for both 96- and 384-well user-defined formats. This instrument can store up to 50 separate wash programs with 50 steps per program and offers flexibility in parameters such as soak time, dispensing rates, vacuum strength, and well aspiration position (this feature is important for preserving the monolayer in cell-based assays). It has been integrated into the SAGIAN robotic system for high-throughput capability.