The robot can pickup and unload the replicator for automatic switching back and forth between the Pipetting System and the pin tool by just exchanging the replicator for the tip manifold.  Not only does the adaptor  allow easy mating to the PerkinElmer Pipettors, it also uses a PerkinElmer feature to reset the pins in the rare event that they get stuck in the up position. 

PerkinElmer Biosciences and V&P Scientific, Inc. are collaborating to place V&P Pin tools onto PlateTrak, MiniTrak and EP3 workstations. 

For Mini Trak Pin Tools contact Beth Rayl at PerkinElmer Biosciences,
e-mail  beth.rayl@perkinelmer.com  or (630) 322-5455 for pricing and availability. 

For EP3 Pin Tools contact Michael Kealy at PerkinElmer Biosciences,
e-mail  michael.kealy@perkinelmer.com  or (630) 322-5302 for pricing and availability. 

You can learn more about their complete line of robotic workstations at the PerkinElmer Life Sciences web site.   Please contact V&P at
sales@vp-scientific.com  or (800) 455-0644  for technical questions about the pin tools and which pin best suits your application.

Pin tools will save you money.  Not only will you use less of your valuable lead compounds,  you will also pay for the pin tool in your second screening operation by eliminating the cost of disposable pipet tips.  At $.12/tip, 200 cases of 384 tips are ~$9,000.00

Whether you have a 96 or a 384 PerkinElmer PlateTrak, MiniTrak or EP3,  we can attach any of our 96, 384 or even 1536 pin tool formats to these platforms.   Because of the height limitation of the PerkinElmer PlateTrak  we use the shorter FPC series pins  to reduce the overall pin length to 33 mm.  The pin protrudes 12 mm below the lower float plate.  The pins used in the PerkinElmer PlateTrak   Double Float Plate Replicators are all fixtured in a 1.58 mm diameter tube to give strength and stability to the small diameter pins.

Procedures for transferring liquids, robot speed, wash solutions, blotting protocols and pin cleaning can found at this hyperlink.  Cleaning the pins between mother plates is easy and effective.  In an experiment to determine the amount of carry over after 100 transfers of concentrated FITC (mother to daughter plate) we were only able to detect  0.000,001,8% of the residual FITC on the pin using only two 100 ml wash baths.

For comprehensive data on nanoliter dispensing with pin tools see the following pages.
 

• DMSO and Aqueous delivery with hydrophobic coated and uncoated solid and slot pins
• DMSO and Aqueous delivery with solid and slot pins
• Maxim Pharmaceuticals, results with slot pin tools
• New England LRIG presentation 6/18/02
• Pin tool data page

The list on the right summarizes the factors that contribute to the volume delivered.  With each application these factors can be controlled and standardized so that the delivery volumes are very reproducible.  With most applications the CV's are less than 5%.

V&P pins transfer liquid by carrying the liquid on the sides, tips and in slots we cut into the tips. The amount delivered is determined by the diameter and surface tension of the pin, the surface tension of the liquid, how far the pin is submerged into the liquid and the speed with which the pin is removed from the liquid.  When all of these variables are fixed, the accuracy of the liquid transfer is very consistent, with CV averages better than 5%.

Increasing the speed of withdrawal from the source plate by 7- fold will increase the volume delivered by as much as 3 fold in a linear relationship.  This phenomenon can be exploited to expand the range of delivery volume for a single pin. The table and the chart below illustrates the effects of increasing the speed 7- fold.  The speed range is from 0.78 cm/sec to 5.7 cm/sec.  Use this chart to select the pin that will deliver in your desired range.

DMSO Liquid To Liquid Transfers With Uncoated Pins

DMSO TRANSFERS WITH UNCOATED (STAINLESS STEEL) PINS

AQUEOUS TRANSFERS WITH HYDROPHOBIC COATED PINS

AQUEOUS TRANSFERS WITH UNCOATED (STAINLESS STEEL) PINS

1.  What volume do you need to  transfer?   DMSO? Aqueous? See these hyperlinked tables to determine your options.  Also consider custom slot pins.

2. Will the source plate have wells with significantly different levels of liquid?  (Cherry picked source plate or edge drying effect?).  If yes and if the absolute volume transferred is critical, then select the largest slot pin that is in your transfer range.  This will minimize the effect of liquid height on the volume of liquid carried on the sides of the pin.  Also consider custom slot pins.

3. Does the material transferred bind non-specifically to stainless steel?  If yes then select the Hydrophobic/lipophobic coated pins.  If no, select the uncoated pins.

4. What is the Z clearance on the robot deck from the highest impediment (top of the source plate/recipient plate/wash reservoirs, etc.) to the top of the robot mounting plate?  If it is greater than 77 mm you can use any of pins.  If it is less than 77 mm, you can only use the shorter FP(#)C series pins (12 mm exposed pin length), the FP(#N) series pins (17 mm exposed pin length) and the E-clip series pins (23 mm exposed pin length pins.  If the Z clearance is less than 60 mm, we recommend you contact us.  There are a few tricks we can do to shave off 5 to 10 mm in height. 

Links to the specifications of all the robot mounting plates/pin tool/pin combinations can be found on the height ("Z") restriction page. 

5.  Is the source plate a deep well plate?  If so you may need to use a 30 mm long exposed length pin ("T" pin) to reach down to the lower levels of the well. 

6.  Should you choose the solid pin versus the slot pin? Although the there appears to be a slight advantage for slot pin, CV's between the two pins are very good.  Both are easy to clean between specimens.  Biggest factor is cost.  If you don't need to deal with varying liquid heights and you can obtain the volume necessary with a solid pin, choose the economical solid pin.

7.    If you are still uncertain about which pin to select for your application, you can perform a simple "Proof of Principle" test with several different pins using our inexpensive VP 450FP3 Replicator Strip coupled via a VP 452MP to one of our robot mounting plates.   An even simpler solution is to use a work station with a 1, 4 or 8 probe dispense head with the new V&P Mono Pin Tool to test the various pins.

Many of our customers want to make liquid to dry plate transfers to make mini-microarrays in a single well for multiplexing assays.  By their very nature these transfers only leave a small volume remaining on the plate.  The amount remaining depends on the surface tension of the plate, the transfer liquid and the pin (diameter and shape).  We have found that reasonable results can be obtained if you use an aqueous spotting buffer and a polypropylene surface (CV's less than 9%).  DMSO spotting buffers leave much less liquid on the dry plate and when used with polystyrene plates the CV's are significantly higher. 

The plate to the right was spotted using a 50 nl slot pin (FP1CS50) transferring oligo DNA in an aqueous spotting buffer to a specially treated polypropylene plate.  Our customer in this case wanted to place 42 individual spots in the bottom of each well of a 96 well microplate.  Spot diameter = 0.55 mm. Volume transferred to the spot = 5.85 nl.

Follow this link for more information on liquid to dry transfers and Multiplexing.

Originally we sold our pin tools with unique part numbers.  As we have added more pins to our selection and more robot systems to mount the pin tools to, the number of unique part numbers grew exponentially to an un-manageable size.  Our solution has been to specify a pin tool by the 3 component parts that compromise the Pin Tool.  The Pins, the Floating Fixture and the Robot Mounting Plate.  If you have previously ordered a pin tool by unique part number, we will be able to provide the same pin tool to you.

1. Select the appropriate pin.  Depending on clearance issues on the deck you need to select the length of pin to use.  We recommend the shorter FPC_ series pins if possible.

2. Select the Floating Fixture with the appropriate pattern (96, 384 or 1,536) and diameter of holes.

3. The BMP MULTIMEK  Mounting plate to the right is compatible with all the PerkinElmer robot systems including the Plate Trak, Mini Trak and the EP3.  This mounting plate does not reset the pins but another resetting mounting plate made by Perkin Elmer does.

Determine the weight of a Robot pin tool at this link

The above delivery volumes for these pins are approximate values, the actual volumes delivered depend upon many controllable factors that will vary from one application to another.  For example in liquid to liquid transfers the amount transferred will include the hanging drop on the bottom of the pin as well as the liquid on the sides of the pin.  If the transfer was to a membrane then only the hanging drop would be transferred and not the liquid on the sides of the pin.  If the transfer was to a dry plate then only about half the hanging drop would be transferred to the dry plate and the rest would be on the pin.  The division of the hanging drop would be determined by the surface tension of the pin and the surface tension of the dry plate.

1. The Tube Style Pins are smaller in diameter and deliver very small volumes (down to 2 nl ).

 
2. Smaller pin diameters also result in more precise delivery volumes (CV's ~4%).
   
 
3. Because the pin is registered between 2 float plates over a greater height, the pin angle will be truer (closer to 90^°) when they touch the surface. 

 
4. The smaller hole on the lower float plate allows us to make very tight tolerances on the fit between the pin and the hole.  This results in very precise placement of the pins on the surface so that very high density arrays can be made without overlapping the spots.

 
5. The tight tolerance we are able to achieve with this design is also very useful when delivering to or from 1536 well microplates.

The E-Clip Pins on the other hand are capable of delivering larger volumes (from 0.5 to 5 ul).

Hydrophobic/lipophobic coated pins are very useful in handling solutions with proteins or lipids that may stick to naked stainless steel.  Click here for more details on the nature of our hydrophobic/lipophobic coating and the coating process.

Please visit this hyperlink for Pin Tool Data And Charts.

Slot pins have several advantages over solid pins:

1. Slot pins carry a larger volume than solid pins in liquid to liquid transfers.
    

2. Slot pins are not as sensitive to the depth of the mother liquid as solid pens.
    

3. Slot pins deliver a larger volume than solid pins in liquid to dry plate transfers.
    

4. Slot pins deliver s larger volume than solid pins in liquid to membrane transfers.
    

5. Slot volume is customizable.
    

6. Slot pins can deliver to dry plates by pre-wetting the plate.

Inquire about custom double float plate PerkinElmer PlateTrak Replicators with slot volumes from 5 nl to 1.0 ul.

Hydrophobic/lipophobic coated pins are very useful in handling solutions with proteins or lipids that may stick to naked stainless steel.  Click here for more details on the nature of our hydrophobic/lipophobic coating and the coating process.

Please visit this hyperlink for Pin Tool Data And Charts.

Custom Floating Slot Pin Replicators can also be made using the 0.457 mm and 0.787 mm diameter pins and placing them into the Floating Pin Replicators described above.  The slot volumes between these two pins can cover a range of volumes from 5 nl to 1000 nl by changing the width and depth of the slot.  Inquire by phone or e-mail for more information.

The most important aspect of using pin tools is to start with clean pins and then keep them clean so they will consistently deliver the same volume.  We recommend our Pin Cleaning Solution (VP 110) to clean the pin of protein and other residue buildup before you start an assay.  To quickly and efficiently remove the previous transfer from the pin we have several different wash reservoirs, flowing reservoirs and fountains to clean  96, 384 and 1536 floating pin tools.  These wash stations also are adapted so the blotting station is part of the washing station thus reducing the cleaning cycle time and the number of robot stations required for the cleaning process.  We also have other independent blotting stations (VP 540D)

Integral to the cleaning process of all pins is the blotting step between baths.  Lint particles in the slots or on pin tips, from standard paper towels, will interfere with the loading and unloading of liquid.  We have solved this problem.  The VP 540DB blotting system is a tray with the standard microplate foot print that contains a super absorbent polypropylene pad covered by a Lint Free Blotting Paper.  We strongly recommend that you use this or our other lint free blotting systems.

Cleaning the pins between mother plates is easy and effective.  In an experiment to determine the amount of carry over after 100 transfers of concentrated FITC (mother to daughter plate) we were only able to detect  0.000,001,8% of the residual FITC on the pin using only two 100 ml wash baths.

We highly recommend that you order the Robot Pin Tool Accessory kit at the time you order the pin tool.  This "essentials" accessory kit contains the VP 540DB Lint Free Blotting System is used to clean the pins efficiently between samples, two VP 540 Wash Reservoirs to wash the pins between source plates, the VP 110 Pin Cleaning Solution is used the clean the pins daily, the VP 425 Pin Cleaning Brush is used if a build up occurs. In addition to this Essentials kit you will also need to order from Perkin Elmer a docking station they make expressly for our pin tools that allows the pin tools to be "Hot Swapable".  Although we have several other wash and blot accessories available these are the most cost effective for the majority of applications.

If you elect to use the fountain and flowing reservoirs we still strongly recommend the other items in this kit.  When purchased as the VP OK20 Kit you will receive a 5% discount over the sum of the individual items.