Even though our standard sandwich covers can be handled by robotic grippers, they have a number of drawbacks in this respect:

• robust, but relatively heavy (150-170 g)
• have to be clamped in during shaking, otherwise they start "rattling", above a certain shaker frequency
• smooth surface of the stainless steel: can slide out of the gripper at an insufficient gripper force

The patented "robot-friendly covers"  address these issues with the following characteristics:

• 50% lighter at 80 grams
• seal part rests on the the walls of the MTP under an angle of approx 50 degrees, and are therefore well positioned and not rattling
• rough structure at the sides, so a reduced risk of sliding out of a gripper

The robot-friendly covers consist of the following parts:

• a soft rubber, made of 50 shore A, SEBS, medical grade, seal
• a thin stainless steel side, under an angle of 5 degrees, so that mispositioning by the robot of 1 mm is allowed; gravity will automatically cause the cover to fall in the proper position
• an ultra-flat carbon-epoxy plate of 1.5 mm thickness for the necessary rigidity
• replacable air filters to prevent air-borne contaminants to enter the headspaces

Robot friendly covers are available for the 6, 24 and 96 well format in both a standard and a low evaporation version.

Want to verify our robot friendly covers in a manual workflow before moving to robotic? Please do note that the covers are only compatible with universal clamps (such as CR1801h) and are not compatible with deepwell MTP clamps such as CR1700.

These sandwich covers are compatible in terms of weight and dimensions with the requirements for the Thermo Fisher Scientific Cytomat automated incubators: Cytomat™ 2 Selector Automated Shaking Incubator (thermofisher.com)

The concept of the Robot Friendly cover series CR22xx has been developed with kind input from Dieter Wagner from ThermoFisher Scientific GmbH.