Low Maintenance Requirements; Cost Savings; High Accuracy, Precision, And Speed - Labcyte Echo 525 User Manual

What are the Echo Liquid Handler features?
The main body of the Echo Liquid Handler has a very small footprint: 53.9 cm wide and 68.3 cm deep (21.2 in x 26.9 in).
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Facilities requirements (power, temperature, ventilation, compressed air, vacuum, communications) are simple and straight
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forward.
Source and destination microplates are loaded onto stages presented outside the instrument and placed in a fixed location
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for easy access by a robotic arm (see the following figure).
Most barcode standards are supported. Barcodes can be located on the short or long side of a microplate.
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The control software supports manual operation "out of the box" device control, system monitoring, creation of destination
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plates and protocol definitions, and protocol execution are available to the user.
Customers choosing to develop their own Echo software applications are supported by a fully implemented ActiveX control
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library.
Figure 3: Access™ Workstation Loading a Source Microplate
For more information, see

Low Maintenance Requirements

Echo instrument up-time is high, not only because it is reliable, but also because very little maintenance is required.
Routine operator maintenance takes only minutes each week— for coupling fluid maintenance.
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Field service maintenance is scheduled once per year for customers with service contracts.
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Echo technology means that there are no tips, no pins, and no washing.
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The acoustic transducer itself has no moving parts to wear out. It simply converts RF (radio frequency) energy to ultrasound
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energy. The mechanisms that move it into position are designed for a long and serviceable life.

Cost Savings

The Echo Liquid Handler reduces operating costs by:
Enabling the routine use of higher density, lower volume assays. Moving to smaller assay volumes reduces the costs of
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reagents and solvents.
The use of higher density microplates dramatically increases the number of assays that can be performed with a limited
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amount of test reagent used.
Minimizing the use of expendable supplies (for example, intermediate microplates, tips, pins, and wash solutions).
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Eliminating washing stations and their complex procedures and fluids.
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Eliminating the requirement to calibrate reduces upkeep time or delays in adopting new liquid handling procedures.
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High Accuracy, Precision, and Speed

High throughput capabilities are maintained without degrading fluid transfer accuracy and precision.
Droplet-to-droplet volumetric precision exhibits a low CV (coefficient of variation) for all fluid types tested to date. This is attributed
to the elimination of sample contact with the ejection mechanism. The use of a single transfer mechanism within the Echo Liquid
Handler reduces the chance of imprecise transfer due to intraplate sample variability, as compared to tip-based and other
instruments that transfer samples in parallel.
What system configurations are supported?
CHAPTER 2 | Introduction
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