Dear Janelle sharkey,

I suggest you to see links and attached file in subject.

-OT-2 - Opentrons

https://opentrons.com/ot-2

-Opentrons

https://opentrons.com/

-A cheap, pipette-wielding robot wants to take over the boring bits of ...

https://www.technologyreview.com/.../a-cheap-pipette-wielding-ro...

-Opentrons Releases Next-Gen Lab Robot, Closes $10M Seed ...

https://www.labmanager.com/.../opentrons-releases-next-gen-lab-r...

-OpenTrons Aims To Be The 'PC' Of Biotech Labs | TechCrunch

https://techcrunch.com/.../opentrons-aims-to-be-the-pc-of-biotech-l...

Best regards

Janelle Sharkey , did you end up buying this?

We bought one recently in our lab here at WEHI, Parkville. Happy to discuss more if you are planning to buy one.

Mohamed-Mourad Lafifi - the three links you shared above that are not from Opentrons are all dead links. I would also like to hear from people what they think of this robot. Nijoy John ?

Hi Gillian,

Although we received the robot couple of months back, we haven't finished calibrating the machine, and it is not yet ready to perform the experiments. To be honest, we have been facing several issues with the calibration step. However, we are not yet sure if this is the problem with our machine or something else. Since Opentrons don't have an onshore technical team (i.e., in Australia), this will take time to fix it. So each time when we face an issue, we have to contact Opentrons team via email and wait till the next day to get a reply (as they are in the US), and then you move on to the next step. Once it is set up (hopefully), the protocols run on python scripts and it is preferable to use their consumables or what they recommend. Opentrons team will design the scripts if you send them the experimental protocol that you want to perform (i.e., drug screening, NGS library preparation, DNA extraction etc.). As we don't know much about the technical details/complexity of this machine, my preference would be to go for a company which has got a support team here in Australia.

Hi Gillian,

Sorry., I thought u were based in Australia, as the primary question about this topic was from Janelle. Sorry I got mixed up.

Thanks Nijoy John - we need it for preparing 384-well plates for RT-PCR. We bought Eppendorfs robot but had to return it because it couldn't cope with our SYBR mix (too viscous). That was after a few months of visits from the technicians trying to calibrate it.

I bought one over the summer, I had a defective multichannel at first that was not pipetting one of the well. They sent me a replacement and we got to run some good protocols for a few weeks. Today after an update the calibration went wrong . I am waiting to hear from the guy on how to fix the issue.

When ti works its great and worth every penny. Its simple to make basic program. When it doesn't then there is not much you can do.

Hi John (Nijoy John),

Thanks very much for writing about the OT-2 robot that you purchased recently - I just happened to see your response now, but I know you wrote a while ago! I hope you have been able to overcome some of the calibration issues you wrote about - and it sounds like some others have had similar issues... (thanks for the info everyone). We're still considering it, but as you suggest - not having onshore support is a big consideration... but the price is so good...!

I was wondering if you have been able to calibrate the robot to use your own pipete tips, or have you opted for the tips Opentrons sells please?

Thanks again for the info.

Kind regards,

Janelle.

Thanks for the info Dominique Alfandari , I hope you have been able to sort out your calibration issues. I was wondering if you are using the pipette tips that Opentrons sells or have you been able to calibrate the robot to use your own pipettes tips please (when it is working of course!)?

Thanks again for the info.

Kind regards,

Janelle.

Hi Janelle Sharkey ,

Unfortunately we couldn't get the robot to work. Opentrons tech team is going to replace the present one and hopefully that might work. Will keep you updated. cheers

Yes I just fixed it, I am using their tips at the moment. For the beginning you want to make sure everything is optimum before you start changing stuff. I am prety sure that as long as the tip rack fits in the base it will be simple to adapt. They see adapter for tip racks that are smaller. You can also easily make it with 3D printing. I would think being offshore is not much of an issue. They are such a small company that they can't send anyone anyway. They are good at making protocol for your specific need. After that as long as you are willing to spend the time testing things, as you say with that price if it saves me or my tech pipetting for 10 h it pays for itself. I am prety sure it will.

I purchased one months ago and had no problems with calibration. It is important to calibrate with the P300 pipette installed on the left. I tried on the right and of course ran into issues. The OT-2 works very well using their pipette tips. You can design and print a pipette tip adapter for your tips. We switched to Rainin LTS tips 6-8 years ago, which are not compatible. It is easy to write custom software for it and can control many aspects of pipetting (even the speed of withdrawal/dispaensing, which helps with handling viscous solution).

Thanks for the info Gyorgy Babnigg :-)

Gillian Kay ,

We also want to try the machine to pipette our 384 RT-PCR plates (with a viscous SYBR mix).

Any chance you already tried the machine?

Or if anybody else has experience with this, it would be very helpful!

Best, Bram

I amslo interested in hearing the latest experiences with this machine

Hi everybody..Do you have experience with cell culture work using this liquid handling system (ot-2).. Thanks a lot!!

Gyorgy Babnigg are there any CAD files to print these pipette adaptors that you know of?

Thanks so much!

Julie

We have a liquid handling robot, used for setting up survival assays. It took us more than a year to troubleshoot and we have just started getting good results. We now use the OT2 for setting up cell survival assays, XTT assays and drug stock preparations. They seem to be performing pretty good!