Robotic Gantry & Laser based sorting mechanism

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Hey everyone,

My name is Rui and I’ve been a member of the space for a few months now. I currently use the space’s 3D Printers and laser cutter to prototype sections of a device that I’m building as part of a start-up company that I founded in 2022. As I don’t have any background nor skills in building anything robotic or electronic, I’m hoping to use this forum to try get any advice , insights or help in this journey. I’m a self-professed beginner so I’m totally open to any means of help in this regard.

One of my key challenges at the moment is that I need to build a robotic system that transports pipette tips between 3 separate sections (a loading bay, a central wash station and a re-racking section). Said system would need to have a dedicated ‘head’ that can pick up and drop off 8 pipette tips at a time between sections and two pumps (one for air linked to the head & the second for cleaning solvents linked to a reservoir that sits underneath the gantry) . I was currently thinking that a 2 axis gantry set-up might be the most appropriate. Perhaps someone has some suggestions of open-source projects that I could use as a starting point?

A separate section of the device would need a laser based sorting mechanism which would sort two lengths of pipette tips on a binary system (laser present / not present) and send tips in one direction or the other based on that signal.

Happy to discuss further either in person (I’m about 30 mins from the space) or via digital means.

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Hey, I’d love to help out. I’ve made a few robots before and this seems cool. Do you have pictures of what the loading bay, wash station, and re-racking section are like? A gantry could be a good idea depending on how the pipettes are laid out. A pneumatic head for moving the pipettes could work or maybe just a well designed clamp.

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Have you seen the Opentrons machines? Sounds similar.

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Hey @VZZId ,

Amazing - Sounds like you’ll have a fair bit of knowledge that would come in very handy! Thank you for offering to help out :pray: It would be awesome to get your input on this!

I don’t currently have any pictures but do have some pretty well defined mental sketches of some of these segments. Today and tomorrow, I’m actually going to try put some of these mental sketches onto paper to facilitate idea exchange. Maybe I can share these with you, if you happen to be around the space later this week?

Let me know what you think!

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Hey Edward,

Thank you for raising Opentrons - I hadn’t actually come across them before!

I’ll definetely have a look into them to see how my start-up might compare to their offerings. Thanks :pray:

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