Mr. Matt Kirtley: Okay. So, thank you, everyone, for coming on into our lunchtime presentation today

So, today, I have the opportunity to talk to all of you about the new product that we just released here at the show. We announced it in November. This is the Encore Multispan Liquid Handling System

My name is Matt Kirtley. I am the Product Manager for the new product, been with Agilent for awhile, and I have been involved with many of the liquid handlers that we have, being their Product Manager before

And so, I was very excited to be able to take the opportunity to be the Product Manager for this new product

So, just a review of today's agenda, I'll be going over the feature set of the new instrument, giving an overview of the capabilities and performance specs that we've built the instrument to

We'll then go into sort of the integration capabilities because, as you go and see a lot of the features, they revolve around our integration capabilities with not only our own instrumentation but also third-party instrumentation

And then we'll also go into a feature set explanation of the new software package that's associated with the hardware

After that, we'll take all of those feature sets and start --starting to paint a picture about the applications that you can do with these capabilities

The integration capabilities, you can imagine, are really primed for setting up complex workflows in an automated fashion on your bench top

We'll go through an explanation of sort of five different areas where we're going to investigate and then go and highlight really two specific ones a little bit more in depth

And then after that, we will probably have a very robust Q&A session, as I see a lot of people here. And with a new product, I know there's always going to be a lot of questions. So, I'm going to make sure we can keep a lot of time on the clock for question and answer afterwards

When it comes time to Q&A, we're going to be passing around a microphone so--just so that everybody can hear. I will do my best to also repeat questions so that everybody can here what the question was that was asked

So, this is it. For those of you who have been nice enough to come down and visit booth 1007 down on the floor, you can see this is the Encore Multispan Liquid Handling System that we just released

So, we were proud to release this in November of last year. So, we're only three months in. It's what we classify internally as an advanced liquid handler. For a lot of you, that just means it's a liquid handler that's no longer sort of formatted for a 96-, 384-, or 1536-well microtiter plate

The individual pipetter capability of this new instrument allows us to address formats such as tubes, plates, vials, really anything that you could attach or fix to the deck of the Encore Multispan

So, for us, this is new capability to bring to our portfolio. Our Bravo Liquid Handler before--or excuse me, that we still are selling, is very complementary. It still retains that 96-channel capability

This is allowing us to now finally address some formats that we haven't been able to in the past

So, as we go through the feature set here, I'm going to sort of highlight four distinct areas that we like to showcase with this instrument

The first one, as you can see here on the right-hand side, is this built-in robotic arm. The built-in robotic arm provides labware management, both on deck and off deck of the instrument

So, if it comes to moving tip boxes or plates around on the deck, you would be using this robotic arm. From there, if that microtiter plate needed to go on and, let's say, go through a detection on a plate reader, you would also use this same ripper to facilitate the transfer off deck for that reading on the plate reader

You can see this is actually quite a distance away from the instrument that we can integrate it, actually turns out to be 21 inches off deck, both on the left and the right-hand side

It also affords about a 15.5-inch sort of Z travel. So, if you imagine up and down relative to the way we're facing the instrument right now, that's a pretty large integration envelope

And it allows you not only to do one instrument on either side, but you can do multiple instruments on either side. As long as it fits into that 21-inch integration envelope, you're going to be able to put an instrument down and integrate it into your workflow

This arm, much like all of the other arms that are present in the automation solutions portfolio, rely on what we call a one-touch teaching method

So, that means that, when it comes time to teaching off-deck positions, such as maybe a third-party instrument or, let's say, like a plate sealer, you simply put the robot into a teaching mode, where it sort of go weightless. And it allows you to manipulate the arm into any location that you want

Once it is into the proper location, you can then hit a button on the top. It remembers that as a teach point. It can now go back there at any time

This one-touch teaching capability is only required when you're teaching off deck. So, when it comes time to teaching plates that are within the confines of this pipetting deck, the instrument is going to know exactly where it is without you having to drive the robot there

So, again, that one-touch teaching is really only needed when it comes time to doing off-deck integrations

So, to sort of explain that a little better and give you an idea, so here is an Encore Multispan integrating with a Biotech MX Reader

You can notice here that the Biotech MX Reader is actually set a little bit behind the Encore Multispan. And that's simply because it would afford significant more integration opportunity right here in front

So, the integration envelope actually extends a bit behind the instrument itself and then extends 21 inches out from there

So, moving onto the second feature that we like to highlight of this instrument is really the pipetting capability. As an advanced liquid handler, it's actually quite important for it to be handling liquids

So, we've taken sort of a new approach in terms--at least for automation solutions, for sort of delivering pipetters to locations where you need them to be

The dual-span or multispan capability of this instrument refers to these two gantries that are installed on the system. Both gantries hold four pipetters each. Each one of those pipetters sits on nine-millimeter centers so that you can then--what is called interdigitation or what is better shown with my fingers, can do this

So, that means that you could put both of the gantries together, line up all eight pipetters on nine-millimeter centers, and you could hit the first column of a microtiter plate

At the same time, though, you can spread them apart in what we refer to as the Y direction--excuse me, the X direction, so that you can afford more movement at any given time

In this example in this movie, you start off with four plates. The three plates on the right-hand side represent source plates that have--well, it's a little difficult to see here, but you have green wells that are lit up. And they represent hits that you need to reformat into a destination plate

As you see, both gantries can move together, spread apart in Y, but then also spread apart in X. All of them can deploy down in Z at any time and also have independent pipetting control

So, that means you can pick up varying amounts of liquid from variable wells in different plans, all in the same motion

What this really translates into is, if you have a complex cherry-picking routine or a reformatting routine, you can get approximately twofold as many samples into your pipetters versus anything else that's out there

Of course, with that variable Y and X spacing, it also means that you can expand the pipetters across multiple plates. So, in this example, you can see there are three plates lined up. You can be pulling samples out of them at any given time. You do not have to go through and process in sort of a plate-wise manner

A new capability for our pipetting that we've built in also to each one of those pipetting cards is the ability to do liquid-level detection and clot detection

This system is based off of a pressure sensor and is not part of a capacitance-based system. So, that means you do not have to have any sort of tips that allow you to create a conductive path through your sample up to a detector. It's simply based on back pressure within the pipetter

There's a number of benefits around that. The one that I just generally like is--means that you can use a tip that isn't black, which is usually how you have to have a capacitance-based system set up

That means you can see your samples on the inside as they're being drawn up

In general, we're very--just very pleased about having a pressure-based system within here because, from there, there's a number of things you can do with pressure reporting on the back end

Moving onto the next two features that we like to highlight, the first is this new intelligence software package that we have

The software that we have now is--it's sort of a hybrid between what we consider the best aspects of liquid handling software out there along with the best aspects of our own Viewer software, for those who are familiar with it

It really provides quite a bit of scheduling control and affords a lot of intelligence that's built in so that, as a programmer, you don't actually have to go through and think about the motion of the pipettes. You just need to think about, "What samples do I need to transfer from one place to another?

With this software, it's really important to highlight that it's based on a new sort of 3D workflow simulator and drag-and-drop interface. So, we'll go through this a little bit better

I know this is kind of a smaller graphic, but you can see here this is a 3D model representation within the software of the Encore Multispan

From there, you can model in all of the other equipment in terms of on-deck accessories or on-deck labware

In addition, you can also model in the third party or other sort of external instruments that you could integrate on either side

With the software, as it knows the position of everything that's on deck and outside of the deck, it gives you incredible control over simulating protocols remotely

And when we say remotely, that means that you're able to run your software from a different location than when the instrument is, go through, write a protocol, run it in simulation

You can have the detail all the way down into the amount of liquid that was transferred or present in each well at any time within the protocol

It can track your tip usage. And it will also just show you sort of the end state, how it ends up, so that you can go through and check, "Did all of my source plates get picked from? Did all my destination plates come to the same level?

These are all very important capabilities--or excuse me, very important steps within protocol optimization

From there, you can then go back and tweak small things. If you say, "Hey, I don't want to do it this way. I--maybe I would prefer to do it a different way," you can go through, make the changes, and the simulator is going to represent exactly what's going to happen on the hardware once you plug it in

This autocalibration and one-touch teaching, I sort of talked about it a little bit when we were talking about this hardware, but it's really driven by the software

So, as an instrument that's delivered from Agilent Automation Solutions, it comes factory calibrated. So, we go through a calibration routine at the factory

And upon install, you will be able to set it up, either on a workbench or a table, where we will then verify via a camera to make sure that the--or sorry, that the calibration has held

At that point, you'll be up and running. All of the on-deck positions would be both taught for pipetters and robot movement. And the only thing you would need to do at that point is set up any sort of external teach points that would be used for integrating instruments off the deck

So, it's really a sort of a goal of a four-hour install for an instrument of this size. We can get it in your lab, put it up on a table or a deck, run a calibration routine, and get you up and running very quickly

The last element of this intelligent software that I like to highlight is around this ability to script within the software

The software has a scripting language associated with it if you would like to get down into a really low-level complex control of the instrument

So, this is very powerful when it comes time to doing sort of what we call nonroutine pipetting tasks or any sort of movements, etc

At the same time, though, there's also a built-in forms capability. This form capability lets you put sort of a wrapper on the outside of a very complex protocol and only expose the most important elements to, let's just say, someone who's not so familiar with automation

So, as an expert of the machine, you could go through and write an incredibly complex protocol and then create a form that could then wrap around it, only exposing variables such as, "How many plates do you want to process, or what sample prep routine do you want to process today?

Those are the relevant bits of information that most people who would like to use this instrument are concerned about. They don't need to get into sort of the nitty-gritty of a dynamic scheduler

So, it's a very flexible platform that allows you to not only expose very complex tasks and have powerful scripting capabilities, but at the same time have it be easy to use for someone who's not overly, let's say, in tune with automation platforms

The last one I'd like to highlight here is our expanded pipetting deck. So, you can see now down in this diagram here, those multiple formats that we're now able to address. Here's tubes, and of course, now, we can move into plates

The expanded pipetting deck affords you 32 what we call plate pad positions or equivalent plate pad positions. So, at its maximum capacity, you could have a total of 32 positions on there

Of those, eight of them are reserved for nonpipetting tasks only. So, on the left and right-hand side, you have a column of four that are there sort of as what I call like the on-deck circle for any sort of labware or plates that need to come onto the deck for pipetting routines

So, with the built-in robotic arm, you're able to bring those pieces of labware onto the deck at any time that the system needs them and just afford sort of onboard storage

This pipetting deck, which is probably a little bit easier to see down here, is actually broken into six sections. Those six sections can be removed at any time to then afford another area for integration, this time now through the deck

So, if you wanted to have something integrated through the deck and present plates up on top, this is the way you could do it. So, now, you have both 21 inches on left and right-hand side that the robot arm can access, but you can now also go through the deck as well

With this system and this expanded pipetting deck, it was important to get enough plates or tubes on the deck so that you could not only store samples on the deck and possibly the associated tips or labware, but also to control on-deck accessories

So, not listed here are over 20 different types of accessories that we can install onto this pipetting deck. Those include things like shaking, heating, cooling, vacuum filtration, MagBead pulldown, barcode reading

We basically have 20 different options that you can install on the deck that are going to help facilitate the complete automation of your workflow

So, we're now going to start to move in a little bit more in depth into the performance specifications with some of the hardware that we've built for the Encore Multispan

Starting off first with the pipetting performance, the pipetting range of these pipetters are from 300 nanoliters up to one milliliter without a hardware change. So, that means, at any time as you're programming a protocol, you have access to transfers that range from 300 nanoliters up to one milliliter

From there, dispenses in the 500-nanoliter range using DMSO as a wet dispense, you'll expect 5 percent CV and a 10 percent relative inaccuracy

At 1 microliter, basically both of those go in half to 2.5 percent CV and 5 percent accuracy

With accuracy, this is something that we can always address within the software. If you need something that's tighter than what we expect here, we have a means within the software to dial this in based on the operating conditions that exist in your lab

So, 5--or 10 percent accuracy and a 5 percent accuracy, respectively, at 500 nanoliters at one microliter represent what you would expect as we place the instrument into your lab. From there, there's always optimizations that can occur

And I've already talked about the pressure base, liquid-level detection, and clot detection. I'd like to highlight that that's present in each one of the eight pipetters that are on deck

In terms of robot arm performance, we've gone over the 21 inches on either side of the instrument. The payload that's capable--that's being--or excuse me, is capable of being moved around by this robotic arm is up to 500 grams. So, that's a pretty weighty object that you would be transferring around on your deck

In terms of speed, a pick in place for a standard microtiter plate from one side of the deck over to the other side could be achieved in under five seconds

So, once you have a robot onboard with this amount of power, it can actually move pretty quickly from left to right-hand side

So, now that we've gone through the feature set and the sort of performance specifications of the instrument, I'd just like to talk now a little bit about ideas of what you can integrate with that robotic arm

So, of course, we mentioned that you can do a lot of the on-deck manipulation of labware. But, from there, you can start to integrate in very complementary capabilities. So, shown here in this first panel is our Bravo Automated Liquid Handler

So, the Bravo provides 96-, 384-, 1536-well plate pipetting capabilities and also adds in an additional nine deck positions worth of space

You can see here the robotic arm built into the Encore Multispan can facilitate transfer back and forth natively of labware between the two

A nice aspect of having these two next to each other is, not only can they share things like a plate, which you would expect to have to sample or do sample prep and then possibly maybe like a bulk addition, but it can also share resources in terms of tips

So, the disposable tips can be used by both systems, both the Encore Multispan and the Bravo, and the software will go through and make sure that tips are available for either system using one pool of resources

The last sort of benefit that we like to highlight about having a Bravo next to it is that you can actually have true concurrency between your pipetting operations

The dual gantry or multispan system that's incorporated into the Encore Multispan can be operating at the exact same time as the Bravo is possibly going through and doing plate stamping or bulk reagent addition

So, you do not have to wait for one to complete its operation before having the other one perform its

So, you really get a little bit of a nice kick in throughput there by having that concurrency available to you

Moving to this middle pane, you can see here we are reaching 21 inches off to access our plate sealer, which is our plate lock from Agilent Automation Solutions

This is an example of our sort of plate management capabilities that we have natively or we can natively provide you as a solution provider

So, if you need plate sealing, if you need plate labeling, if you need microplate centrifugation, those are all capabilities that we can add in and integrate with using the Encore Multispan

And then finally, this last pane over here, third-party instrumentation, so we also have the ability to not only physically hand off plates to third-party instrumentation like a plate detector, such as like a microplate reader or possibly like an incubated storage, but we also have the ability to control certain items through the software as well so that you can have a very nicely coordinated workflow with all of the instruments being controlled by our software

This really is going to allow you to get the most out of a sort of a complete sample-to-analysis workflow, where you can set samples down, hit go, and when you come back, you have a plate of samples that have somehow been read or prepped, ready for the next step

So, at this point, I'm going to sort of tend to move away form the hardware and really focus on the other big aspect of this system. And that's the software associated with it

So, this is a little bit of a better view of our 3D simulator, where we have modeled in 3D space all of the hardware that would be present in your workstation

On here, we then have the capability to also model in your labware, such as microtiter plates, whether they are standard height or possibly deep well. Also--excuse me, disposable tip boxes will also be modeled in as well

Knowing all of those--the locations of all of those items, you know, through this graphic layout lets you simulate these protocols remotely

So, this is where you--the instrument is going to be taking its cues on how to start doing path planning based on what's present around it and on the deck

It's going to go through and take everything into account and knows where it can place things at certain times versus other times. It's also going to allow you to avoid any sort of crashes that would occur because it knows the height of everything out there

Moving onto the calibration, we talked about this idea of the autocalibration and sort of the four-hour install

This calibration covers all on-deck positions. So, again, if you wanted to bring a system up in your lab, it could be placed there. It could be turned on. And you're going to be able to go and either pipette out of or transfer a plate across the deck, all without having to drive to crosshairs or any sort of reticule

So, for you as a user, with 32 on-deck positions, if you had to teach every single one of them, that's going to actually take quite a bit of time for you to do

The factory calibration in combination with this optical camera system that we have, you're going to be able to avoid any of that manual teaching that's normally associated with a liquid handler like this

And of course, that means that we just get you up and running a lot quicker so that you have time to really focus a lot more on the science and the workflow and the protocols that you would like to automate versus the sort of subtle tweakings and small little adjustments you might have to make to a liquid handler, where you have to go through and verify teach points

Collision avoidance, I've spoken a little bit about that in terms of the 3D simulator, but there's active collision avoidance built into the software

You can imagine having both of the gantries with eight pipetters and a robotic arm all--and to the same platform. It could be a little daunting to think about, "How am I going to get all of these things moving at the same time without them running into each other and, you know, possibly requiring a service call?

Well, the good news is, of course, we don't want you to ever have to do that. So, we built in active collision avoidance

That means that you do not have to go through and sort of plan your protocol based on any current location of the robot. You don't have to go through and move plates out of the way because the robot or the gantry needs to come by. It's going to take care of all of that for you

The software really is just trying to direct users towards a workflow that's relevant to them and not have them worry about where the robot's going to be, where the pipetters are going to be

So, with that being said, simplifying protocol authoring was the goal. You'll never have to go through and make changes to a protocol just to avoid a collision. And ultimately, it allows you to protect your investment a lot more

Moving onto the liquid handling, so liquid handling is sort of the forefront feature of an advance liquid handler. So, we've taken a new approach to designing and accomplishing tasks within the software

We have a new flexible architecture that exposes sort of three levels of complexity when it comes time to liquid handling

The first is just a general sort of task, where you can aspirate and dispense as needed. This is going to be what I would call sort of the most elementary task for liquid handling that's available on the system

At the same time, if you need to start programming in a little bit more complexity into your routine, something like a tip touch or if you would like to do aspiration below a certain amount of level from the meniscus, all of that would then be available within this next level down, which is turned a liquid class

Now, you can go through and say, "For any types of liquid that I define as a liquid class, run the following routine," where you perform a tip touch or you aspirate at a certain speed, simply because it's too viscous to allow you to pull it up really quickly

So, that's sort of the second level of control that you have. Moving on from there, there's this third level, which is really the low-level technique. It's going to be called a pipetting technique. And it allows you to now move pipetters as you aspirate or dispense

So, if you have a flat bottom plate and you want to make sure you are covering all of that flat bottom plate as you're aspirating, you have the ability to move pipetters in there

You do not have to go through each one of these layers to accomplish aspiration and dispense tasks. It's up to you based on your protocol how deep you need to go into sort of these three different layers

And finally, the flexible transfers that are available through this system, so there are two transfer tasks that are built into the software

One of them is file based. A file-based transfer is going to read a file and identify either locations within a plate or a barcode and say, "Okay. I know where those are." And then next to it, there's a column saying, "This is how much I want to transfer." And then finally, a last column would be, "This is where I want to transfer it to." And that might be a barcode or a position in a plate

This file-based transfer task is perfect for things like a cherry-picking routine or a hit-picking routine, something where you either have a limb system dictating what you need to pick out on any given day or anything that would require sort of a flexibility from day to day to perform different types of--or sorry, to aspirate from different locations within a plate

Within this task, you have the ability to not only handle both the aspirate and dispense, but also, you can do tip management in there as well

So, there is a tip policy that can be associated with a single task icon. All of this is--can be managed through this dialogue box

Now, when it comes to sort of a graphical transfer, let's say you're not transferring from a file or you're not working with a limb system where you're going to be dictated to what you need to go and pick out. You want to do something like a serial dilution, something that's very common to a lot of your assay plates, maybe add in controls, both positive in negative

You can then use this graphical transfer to go through and design those types of tasks

Again, you have the ability to do aspirate, dispense, and tip management all in a single task. But, now, you have the ability to save them as templates for future use so that you don't have to redefine them at a later time. And that's really why it's idea for either plate reformatting or doing serial dilutions, something that's very common in your workflow

So, you have two different ways that you can really go through and design your pipetting tasks, whether it's file based or whether it's more of a graphical interface. You have that in the software ready to go

So, I'll be moving on now to discussing some of the applications that the Encore Multispan can be used in. So, of course, with a tool like this, you would expect it to be able to be flexible to handle a lot of different types of workflows, something like genomics, proteomics, cell biology screening, amitox [sp]. There's a number of applications that we can do

Things that I'd like to highlight, though, is that some of these applications are incredibly complex in terms of the number of steps or number of processes that need to occur on any sample, something like next-gen sequencing or LCMS sample prep. Both of those require a number of steps to get your sample into a format so that it's now detectable or it can be placed onto a sequencer

It's not necessarily that you have a very high sample volume. It's that you have a number of steps that need to occur to every single sample that you process

An instrument like this with its capability of reaching off deck is perfect for those type of applications

So, moving into this idea of a sample-to-analysis workflow, for us, that means that you have a source plate, whether it's a plate, a vial, tube, something that you can place on the deck. You can then program in a protocol that's going to take it all the way from aspirating from that source all the way to formatting it so that it can be read on a detector and then fed into a plate reader or an LCMS system, something that's going to get you data back

That just means that you have incredible amounts of walk-away time during that sample-to-analysis routine so that you can then go and do different things within the lab

Of the five listed here, there's actually two that I'd like to highlight during this talk, both the automation of LCMS sample preparation and the automation of sample normalization

Both of these are pretty complex routines that really highlight the power that's built into the Encore Multispan System, both in terms of hardware and software

So, going into a deeper dive for this LCMS sample preparation, this is a diagram showing a typical setup for an LCMS sample prep system

Here, you have a plate sealer. And you have a microplate centrifuge. On the right-hand side, you would have an integration of an autosampler and LC stack. Not shown here would be the mass spec, which would be right around in this area

But, this whole workflow, to ultimately feed plates off into this LC requires sort of filtration, SPE steps to occur, lots of stuff that would require people to come back and sort of manually manipulate your samples

With this system, a lot of that can be built into--onto the on deck so that you have the capability of doing vacuum filtration on deck

If you wanted to do sort of spin filtration, you could do it using the centrifuge

Ideally, though, you're going to have samples placed on this deck. And then you're going to run through a routine here and then fed into an autosampler, where they can then get queued up for analysis

So, an Encore Multispan, as you can see here, if you were to take away sort of these elements, you could actually put a single Encore Multispan at the center of four different LCMS systems and have it just sort of feed each one for round-the-clock analysis

The number of samples processed by an Encore Multispan can actually feed up to those--up to four. So, that means that you're sort of taking the bottleneck of analysis out by simply running four of them in parallel here with this system

Moving into sort of a different application, this is nucleic acid sample normalization. With this application, generally, you have samples that arrive in an unknown and varying concentration. And they need to be normalized to a single concentration across all samples

With this work station, which consists of not only the Encore Multispan but also the Bravo and a bulk dispenser and a plate reader, you can have a protocol that takes an initial assessment of the samples that were presented to you, go and program based on the results of the plate reader, program in all of the proper dilutions so that it would then end up at the same concentration, finally take those normalized samples and assess the final concentration to verify that it's performed everything properly

So, again, a situation where you can place raw samples on the deck, build in the capability to process them, all the way to sort of a detection readout at the end

That was my presentation today. And I want to thank everyone for coming in. Please visit us at booth 1007, which is downstairs. We have two systems running, both on the floor

And at this point, I just want to say thank you for listening to my talk

Yes, the question was, "Are we planning on integrating sort of design of experiment capabilities into our software natively," correct? Yes

Right now, we don't have any plans to do that. But, I would be confident to say, and hopefully maybe one of the software representatives is here, that we built on an architecture that's not going to preclude us from doing any sort of capability like that

Thank you. Good question. Yes

Very good question. Yeah, so the question was, "Do the channels, the pipetting channels, reach every location on the deck?

And what I can say is that, when we talked earlier about this idea of a nonpipettable area on the left and right-hand side, that would then mean that the included area within--where the pipetters can go, each one of the pipetters can go to any well located on that pipettable area

So, if you have the pipetter that is sort of in the back of the instrument and you want it to reach all the way to the front-most corner, well, it can do that

So, you could map any pipetter to any well on the pipettable deck

Unidentified Man: [Inaudible.

Mr. Matt Kirtley: That's a good question. The question was, "In terms of applications, do you have the ability to optimize based on different criteria?

So, yes, you can. So, many applications might require something like compound plates, like master compound plates, to be exposed to the environment for as short amount of time as possible

And so, we have built into the optimizer a preference that you can set, where, if you want to optimize having the plates that are designated as source to be on deck for the shortest amount of time, it can do that

Conversely, you could also say, "I would like to have any destination plate, which would be then ready for downstream processing, to be filled up as soon as possible so it can go on its way." So, that type of optimization is built into the software

In addition to that, when it comes time to actually programming the hardware, let's say you suspect contamination has maybe occurred in one of the eight pipetters. You can simply go into the diagnostic software, turn it off, and run a protocol. And it's going to remap the pipetters based on what it needs to get down

So, you don't have to go through and modify protocols based on possibly, you know, pipetters going down. It's going to do that for you. It's going to make sure that your protocol runs. Good

A question in the back. Oh, sorry, sorry, yes, yes

Unidentified Man: [Inaudible.

Mr. Matt Kirtley: Yeah, no problem, my apologies

Unidentified Man: One thing about the cherry picking, so looking at the plan of the day, am I right in saying that you can have 24 things as source [unintelligible] rather than 32

Mr. Matt Kirtley: Yes, that's correct. So, 24 are within the pipettable area. Eight, which would be four on either side of that, are then designated as the nonpipettable area. However, they are grippable by the onboard robot

Unidentified Man: Right. So, they can't also fit the eight that are nonpipettable. We have to use that destination [unintelligible]

Mr. Matt Kirtley: Well, you wouldn't be able to place a plate on that and then aspirate in or out of it. However, the robot would identify saying, "Hey, that's a destination plate that I need to have on deck at some point." And it would just schedule it to come into the pipettable area when needed

So, yes, you could place them there. And the software will make sure that they're where they need to be

Unidentified Man: Okay. Another question was about the liquification [sp]. So, as I understand it, there's no capacitance [unintelligible]. Is that correct

Mr. Matt Kirtley: That is correct. The question was, "Do we have both dual sort of systems, one pressure based and one capacitance based?" And the answer is no

We only rely on the pressure-based system for liquid level and clot detection

Unidentified Man: Right. So, do we have to worry about making pressure profiles for the different types of liquids

Mr. Matt Kirtley: So, most of the common sort of profiles that you might see, which would be--I am sort of deploying down in Z trying to find a liquid level. That would be handled by the software

If you wanted to get into something a lot more complex, maybe looking for, you know, a very unique sort of pressure profile on the back end, it would be something that we'd have to expose and then go through

It's being recorded, of course. It's just a matter of exposing it to a user

Unidentified Man: Yeah, one final one, I promise

Mr. Matt Kirtley: No problem, as many as you want

Unidentified Man: The barcode reader, how is that done

Mr. Matt Kirtley: Yeah, the question is, "How is the barcode reading done?

So, right now, the barcode reading is done in two ways. You have the option to put on a mirrored barcode reader, which would look like a standard plate pad on the deck and could read 1D or, you know, sort of like picket-fence-style barcodes

There's also the integration of a 2D barcode reader that could be placed on deck, could also be placed off deck if you wanted, but it can go on deck so that you could scan 2D barcodes up into something like a matrix, like a matrix-style plate

In terms of something like a flyby barcode reader or looking for barcode reading of tubes, that's going to be an option that's going to be available later this year in addition to sort of racks that allow that to happen, you know, sample racks that allow you to do that

Unidentified Man: So, at the moment, let's say you could place on every barcode the arm would need to pick them up [unintelligible] barcode reader [unintelligible]

Mr. Matt Kirtley: Yeah, you could do it one of two ways. You could make every plate pad have a barcode reader on it, or you could make use of that arm that we gave you, and you could just have it go either do like maybe a preprotocol routine, where it just validates that every plate that's on deck is what is there and accounted for by just simply moving each plate, taking the read and going through

Unidentified Man: So, there are no plans to actually place a barcode reader on the arm itself

Mr. Matt Kirtley: So, the flyby barcode reader that could be designed or that is in design right now could possibly do that

We would have to talk about the pros and cons of doing it that way. There are some subtle nuances. In the end, though, we have a means for you to not only verify each plate that's there at the start of a routine, but at any time throughout the routine, you could always schedule in a scan. So, yeah

Good. Thank you

Let me just make sure I got your question right. The question was, "How do we evaluate at 300 nanoliters CV and relative inaccuracy

Unidentified Man: What is the [unintelligible] 500, 5 percent

Mr. Matt Kirtley: Oh, what is--at 300 nanoliters, what is it

So, that's going to actually be very much liquid dependent. So, you have the ability to go through and define those liquid classes, which are going to make your CV and RI measurements as --you know, as accurate as--or sorry, as optimal as possible

But, at the 300-nanoliter range, you're going to be looking at about 7 to 8 percent. But, you're going to be doing some optimizing for that

Something that's very important for that CV inaccuracy at that level is to make sure that your Z deployment is right on so that you're allowing the droplet not only to form at the end of the tip but then also sort of be grabbed by the plate so that it can pull it off the tip completely

So, down at 300 nanoliters, it's not only just sort of moving the piston, but it's also making sure that the pipetter tip is really accurately defined and well located to accomplish a good CV. And that's part of the optimization that would go through for that level of accuracy

Yes, right here in the front. Actually, if you'd just let me know what your question is, I'll make sure everybody knows

The question was, "We've got 21 inches of reach off deck. Have we ever considered sort of integration--or sorry, a robot arm reach down possibly through the deck or below the instrument so that you probably have more integration capabilities?

So, right now, with this design, the dropdown grippers--let me just back up really quick

Right? So, you can see these grippers here. They're sort of designed two ways. One, it's to make sure that we can reach over, you know, tall stacks of plates or tall tips and reach something that's down low

At the same time, it does afford a bit of sort of drop down. But, this is where we're going to be limited in terms of the Z

So, when it gets down to here, you're not going to be able to go any lower. So, you'll be able to go a little bit lower than this pipetting deck, but probably not too much. It's pretty important to bring that plate up to where the robot arm can get it in this case

Good question. Yes, Tim. Oh, sorry. So, the question was, "Can you really turn off one of the pipetters and keep running as originally planned?

Yes, you can. You know, actually, expanding on that, each one of those pipetters is held on--I actually have one right here. So, each one of these pipetting cards is held on using a single thumbscrew

So, if you did encounter a pipetter that maybe had to go down for whatever reason, if you had one of these spare, you could disable it if you wanted to, or you could undo the thumbscrew and simply reattach a new one. And you could be running again with eight

So, it's a very simple design. And it's very sort of user friendly in terms of replaceability

Unidentified Man: Is that within a protocol, or--

Mr. Matt Kirtley: --Oh, within a protocol

Unidentified Man: [Unintelligible.

Mr. Matt Kirtley: Let's see. Yeah, the robot arm probably is not going to be able to operate that thumbscrew. Yeah, we probably wouldn't be able to do it during a protocol. We'd be able to give you errors that flag you that allow you to come back and say, "Hey, there's something that's gone on." From there, you'd have to use the error recovery after you've made a change

Unidentified Man: You talked about the cannulas and if they can switch them

Mr. Matt Kirtley: Yes

Unidentified Man: And that's inner-routine

Mr. Matt Kirtley: The tip adaptors

Unidentified Man: Yes

Mr. Matt Kirtley: Yes. So, the tip adaptors, let me go back here real quick. So, the tip--the way that we--these pipetters actually work is that you have the engagement of a tip adaptor, which I can show right here, automatically by the hardware

So, each one of these tip adaptors gets picked up by the pipetter card from a rack that is placed on deck. And it then allows for the engagement of the different-sized tips that we sell for the Encore Multispan

So, that includes, you know, tips down to the 10-microliter range all the way up to that one mil

When it comes time to managing these in the software, there's nothing you really have to do. It's going to know based off your transfer volume that you've requested which one of these to pick up. And then once it's done with it, it can disengage it. So, yeah, it's all done within the protocol

Yeah, so, the question was, "What's the minimum distance you can do for integrations off the left or the right-hand side and still make it so that path planning doesn't have to get really complex," right, because you could imagine, if you had that reader just snug right up against the Encore Multispan, you're not going to be able to go above the reader and try and integrate something behind it

So, yeah, as part of the integration services that we can do with workstations is we map out where you place instruments based on the instruments you need. And we'll come up with something so that we make sure, yeah, you don't have to try and do something really complex or try and thread the needle in

So, good question