Open Hardware Liquid Handling Platform for Laboratory Protocol Automation

Megan Zimroth

Open Hardware Liquid Handling Platform for Laboratory Protocol Automation

Fundación Ciencias Exactas y Naturales

AWARD AMOUNT

2000 USD

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Fundación Ciencias Exactas y Naturales creates open-source hardware for societal use. Their project “Open Hardware liquid handling platform for laboratory protocol automation” brought together six specialists in 2020 to create liquid-handling (pipetting) robots under an open-source ecosystem. This was motivated by the many pipetting robots that were developed in 2020 with insufficient documentation for other people to reproduce them (e.g. no complete bill of materials), or with expensive components that are not feasible in an Argentinian context.

“Pipettin” was therefore designed to automate molecular biology protocols of low to moderate complexity at low-cost to enable access for under-resourced groups, especially from the Global South. It was designed to be easy to use, fully open source, highly documented, modular in design, minimal in cost, very hackable, marketable, and integrates well with other open labware projects.

The goals of the project were:

  1. Multimedia documentation covering most aspects of the project
  2. Consolidating reliance on widely available components, 3D printing, and modularization
  3. Using cheaper parts and make use of existing equipment (i.e. the micropipettes)
  4. Modularizing hardware and software, implement a tool-changer

Documentation

The prototype designs and documentation are now available on Gitlab. The project team have documented part of the assembly process, and most (if not all) of the development on their Wiki and frequent updates have been posted to the GOSH forum (Phase 1 | Phase 2).

Hardware and Software 

In Phase 1 the frame and controllers were completed using commercially available pipettes. In Phase 2 the project succeeded in developing low-cost OScH electronic micropipettes (collaborating with mechanical engineer Bruno H. Serrentino), and migrated the GUI to a modern web framework (collaborating with Fiqus coop., Silvina Varela, Zeynep Tarkan, and Lucas Fernández).

Lessons learned by the project include:

  • Rely on pre-existing collaborations (new collaborations take time).
  • Meeting the right people for the job, at the right time, is as important as funding. In particular, there were challenges with hiring an engineer as they tend to act according to standards, when an out-of-the-box perspective would be more appropriate at an early prototyping stage. Moving forward, the project will likely hire people in early-stage higher education, who identify themselves as “makers” and the team believes are likely to be a better fit for this kind of project. 
  • Purchase all parts from a single supplier (to reduce the administrative overhead).
  • Documentation tools are important but you can use them in sequential order of complexity if the tool is blocking creation of basic documentation. For example, the team wrote the assembly guide in regular markdown, and plan to move it to GitBuilding only after it is complete.

The project is continuing and the project team credit much of their success to the helpful collaborations with other GOSH members through the forums. In the future, they want to continue their project by testing and calibrating the final version of the micropipettes, as well as finishing the GUI’s usage documentation and putting it to the test.

Reference Number: CDF-101

Documentation

Event Media

Forum Posts