The opentron liquid handler is currently in what I would consider an alpha stage of development in both hardware and software, when compared to more expensive liquid handlers produced by companies like tecan, hamilton, agilent, etc. It is considerably less useful due to the lack of software control as well as hardware like plate readers, centrifuges, multichannel pipette heads of appropriate volumes. You should think of the opentrons as the raspberry pi (circa 2012) of liquid handlers.
The control software is not currently stable, and they release upgrades frequently that will break working programs. With enough discussion on their github you can generally get them to fix these kinds of errors in a couple of weeks. I recently went through a process getting the dispensing and aspirating speeds to be recognized properly be the software <https://github.com/Opentrons/opentrons/issues/2773>(they were being ignored). This will be a critical feature for you to use if you're handling liquids of different viscosities. The OT2 currently does not have a pipettor smaller than the P10, so you will likely be out of luck on setting up trays, even at a 1+1 uL drop ratio. If you just want to make screens this robot could be a good option for you, though it does not have crystallography-centric software to make pipetting the correct solutions easy. We are currently using it to do phytip purifications of proteins in small scale, and it seems to be doing the job reasonably well after all the bugs have been worked around, which took a significant amount of time. Enjoy, -Tim On Tue, Jan 1, 2019 at 10:01 AM Artem Evdokimov <artem.evdoki...@gmail.com> wrote: > Good morning and Happy New Year to you > > In brief, it can be used to create screens although programming multiple > ingredients with varying viscosities will initially be a fairly steep > challenge since the software is not specific to crystallization. It can be > done though and provided that you can re-use protocols (I.e. today you set > up PEG 3350 versus salt and pH and tomorrow you set up PEG 6000 versus salt > and pH without changing concentrations) it can even be effective. > > You would likely need to write your own code for gradients and suchlike > but maybe you can borrow from existing protocols a bit. It is all in Python > anyway. > > I would not use this robot for setting drops unless there is so much > protein available that 1ul + 1ul drops are not wasteful. The pipettors are > essentially the same (in terms of tolerances and volume limits) as your > average wet lab hardware. Now, if you have a willing colleague with > mechanical and coding mojo at your disposal you can probably modify the > robot to use a crystallization friendly operating device, assuming you can > get a hold of an accurate sub microliter dispenser with an open API. The > robot API is open towards change. > > In a nutshell this robot is sort of like a large 3D printer chassis with a > deck and pipettors bolted on. If you love to tinker this is a machine for > you. Cannot beat the price. > > Artem > > On Mon, Dec 31, 2018, 12:46 Doug Juers <juer...@whitman.edu wrote: > >> Hello All, >> >> I've just learned about the opentrons pipetting robot, which appears to >> be quite affordable relative to other robots. I'm wondering if anyone here >> on ccp4 bb has any experience with it - for creating crystallization >> screens and/or setting drops? >> >> Best, >> Doug >> >> >> ------------- >> Douglas Juers >> Physics Department >> Program in BBMB >> Whitman College >> >> ######################################################################## >> >> To unsubscribe from the CCP4BB list, click the following link: >> https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=CCP4BB&A=1 >> > > ------------------------------ > > To unsubscribe from the CCP4BB list, click the following link: > https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=CCP4BB&A=1 > -- Tim Craig PhD Chief Scientific Officer - HarkerBIO Mobile: (661) 993-5576 tim.cr...@harkerbio.com ######################################################################## To unsubscribe from the CCP4BB list, click the following link: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=CCP4BB&A=1
