8x Greater Productivity

Well plates are a must for clinical laboratories where bioassays are used for high-throughput screening and IVD. In these situations, reproducibility, precision and accuracy are fundamental to create a stable and reliable system that allows clinicians to correctly interpret the results.

To thrive in such a challenging market, well plate kit manufacturers need to be ahead of the curve, implementing dependable innovative solutions to deliver high volumes of accurately filled assay containers. In line with this winning approach, one of the major players in the market for disease and allergy diagnostic assay kits wanted to invest in an automation solution, upgrading its multichannel well plate filling system.

Reinventing automated well plate filling operations

The existing unit had been in service for 15 years and had recently started experiencing a number of issues that were affecting productivity and efficiency. The system was prone to overfilling the wells, causing liquid spillage and at one point the manufacturer could only fill half of the 96 wells within one plate at once. As a result, the process was substantially slowed down and could only deliver 600 plates per day.

The technology behind it was also obsolete and several replacement parts were no longer available off the shelf, leaving the factory exposed in case of equipment failure. In addition, the system could no longer offer the level of flexibility that the plate-based assay provider needed to support its customers. The unit did not offer plate stacking for example which was done manually. Within a plate, it could only fill all 96 wells with the same liquid, without offering the possibility to accurately dispense different substances onto one plate.

The motion performed during these different operations is controlled by Mitsubishi Electric's MELSEC-L series PLC to ensure accurate speed and positioning. This is a compact and flexible solution that can control different networked stations. Jeremy Shinton, Modular PLC Product Manager at Mitsubishi Electric, explains: "We chose the L series PLC because it could effectively handle the high level of complexity that characterises the current application as well as support any expansion of the unit in the future."

The system also communicates with a GOT 2000 HMI, through which operators can select the correct recipes and the liquid volume that should be dispensed into the wells (this ranges between 0 and 250µL) as well as monitor the process in real-time. If the system stops, the HMI also provides key information to help operators resolve the issue and restart the machine as quickly as possible.

An integrated system with the power to evolve

The seamless integration of PLC, servo motors and servo amplifiers ensured a fast filling speed, high accuracy, repeatability and precision, despite the low volumes being processed. As a result, the IVD kit manufacturer could eliminate all the issues associated with overfilling, such as equipment downtime to clean the machine and its surroundings, whilst improving the overall product quality. In particular, the factory expects to reduce waste generation by over 50%.