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Final Design
Dr. Matthew Strain at UC San Diego is currently attempting to research HIV-infected Memory-T lymphocytes by first dumping and separating the cells into a micro-array. Developing a pick-and-place cell robot would benefit Dr. Strain by saving time and energy maneuvering the cells from the micro-array into the much larger titer wells and it what was aimed for in this project. The final design consists of XY-stage that allows the movement of the slide in the XY plane and a linear Z-stage that allows movement of the glass tip in the Z-axis. For the extraction, two methods were perused and tested; a permanent magnet method using paramagnetic beads, and a vacuum method using the Sutter Instrument™ Micro injector. Both methods with varying parameters. While waiting for the Sutter Instrument™ Micro injector shown in Figure 3 to arrive. A more stable setup has been acquired with a pneumatic table to decrease the effects of vibrations as much as possible and also to have more control over the extremely fragile glass tips that are compatible with the injector. The setup shown in Figure 2 is our final setup for the micro-injector. The CAD shown in Figure 3 was made in week 4 provided a rough picture on how the final apparatus should look like. As soon as the micro-injector arrived, it was mounted and tested.
Project performance
With the setup shown in Figure , the Paramagnetic method was tested while varying parameters such as needle type, size and the trajectory of the needle (touching, not touching or sweeping). A total of 51 tests were conducted. After 51 tests it was determined that that the optimal parameters were with using insect needle #1 with 224 lbf from the magnets. This combination had a 100% success rate in 4 consecutive tests.
Figure 1. Paramagnetic Method: Actual setup (top), 2D CAD (bottom)
With the setup shown in Figure 1, the Vacuum method was perused and tested. There was a total of 28 tests with adjusting parameters such as fine dial revolutions, trajectory of glass tip (if touching the slide or not). It was found that the optimal parameters is with 5 turns on the fine knob shown in Figure 4 and with a trajectory of not touching the slide. 5 successive tests were carried out with this combination, all of which was successful. Therefore, it was found that the Sutter™ micro injector was capable of picking up one cell from a single well on a micro-array slide and placing the cell into a micro-titer well. A full pick and place robot was complete. The project requirements were met as well.
Figure 2. Vacuum Method: Actual Setup
Figure 3. Vacuum Method: CAD Drawing
Figure 4: Sutter Instrument™ Manual Micro-injector
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