OSMOMETER

CSC Project Photo CSC Project Photo CSC Project Photo

Customer Need

Due to demand in the industry the customer needed to increase throughput of sample measurements with their freezing point osmometer. Their current system was operated by manually feeding multiple osmometers with samples.

Custom Systems and Controls was asked to design and fabricate the hardware and proof of concept programming for the robot. The automated system needed to effectively perform this process and attain a throughput of over 100 samples per hour with the following specifications:

  • Sterile Packaging of Sample Tube Rack
  • Platform and enclosure for proper safety features
  • Bar-Coded Sample Tube Rack – for positive sample identification.

Solution

CSC designed and built a system on our ROBOKIT platform that integrated 8 osmometers and was able to measure 96 samples in approximately 35 minutes.

Some features of this project are:

  • SCARA robot for pick and place of samples
  • Custom head and end effectors
  • Proof of Concept software for controls
  • 3" Tubular Steel Frame
  • Full enclosure with all emergency and safety features

System Components

IAI IX-NNN-5020 Robot

Festo Pneumatics

National Instruments' Digital and Analog I/O Cards

Success

The client was able to introduce the world’s fastest freezing point osmometer (at the time) to the biotechnology industry at the 2007 BioProcess International show. This machine received CE and ETL Listing on its first trip to the testing lab.