PCR tube reformatter

The Tube Reformatting system is a free standing robot, designed to eliminate a repetitive step in the manufacturing process of PCR test kits. It used 4 separate axis to move full well plates and empty magazines to a transfer area under an Epson SCARA robot arm. The tubes are popped from the well plate and transferred to the magazines using a custom vacuum gripper. The magazines are then moved under a QC camera and machine vision is used to confirm the required positions have been filled. Magazines are then transferred to a conveyor and either deposited into a chilled output trolley or rejected into a chute at the back of the system. Empty well plates are transferred back to the user loading area to be replaced.

To make the system as easy to operate as possible it uses light curtains which remove power from the actuators when a user breaks the curtain. It does however maintain communications to ensure it can be quickly restarted once the next set of samples are loaded. This is combined with the multiple axis to ensure a very high throughput resulting in 64 samples being processed in 7 minutes.