26. PrepTrack II Design: Lessons Learned from PrepTrack I 

John Bercovitz, Martin Pollard, David Humphries, Mario Cepeda, Charlie Reiter, and Bruce Gray 
Joint Genome Institute, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 
JHBercovitz@lbl.gov 

The PrepTrack is an automated high-throughput microtiter plate liquid handling machine. It is a linear modular system in which microtiter plates are transported from module to module by means of a conveyor belt. The instrument is designed to make automated efficient use of the Robbins Scientific pipetting head (96 or 384 syringes). All of the modules can operate simultaneously to perform liquid handling operations on individual microtiter plates or liquid transfers between microtiter plates. Each pipetting module is equipped with automated self-cleaning water and bleach baths. Efficiencies are realized by the parallelism of the Robbins pipetting head, the parallelism of multiple modules operating simultaneously, and the ability to continue pipetting operations on available modules while other modules are occupied with self-cleaning procedures. 

The first PrepTrack machine has been in production use for one year. We have since completed a second PrepTrack machine. There were several design changes based on lessons learned from use of PrepTrack I. The design changes and reasoning behind the new designs will be discussed.