Tip Drawer General Information

Overview

the Tip Drawers module holds the pipette tips. Each drawer houses one rack and each rack has three tray positions. Each drawer has a sensor that detects if the drawer is opened or closed. Each Tip Drawer also contains an interlock to ensure that it cannot be opened during operation. The Tip Tray design has a no keying required—this means that the tips can be loaded in either orientation.

Interfacing Modules

The Tip Drawers interface with two modules—pipettor arms and the Sample Bay modules. the pipettor arms pick up the tips from this drawer. The Tip Drawers are a sub-assembly of the Sample Bay. Initializing the Tip Drawer requires initialization of the Sample Bay module.

Theory/Sequence of Operation

The Tip Drawers are unlocked, Tip Trays are loaded, the drawers are pushed in, and the tips go into inventory. Pipettor arms pick tips from the same tray until the pipettor can no longer pick tips from the tray. The arms then move to the subsequent tray. The number of retries in a Tip Drawer is set in the pipettor parameters.