Designing a liquid-handling robot
Lab automation is the application the engine was built around: a deck, plates, a pipettor on an XYZ gantry, and a protocol that turns into motion. Here's the workflow from protocol to running hardware.
From assay to motion in four steps
Deck layout. Place plates, tip racks, and reservoirs on the ZYMETRYX deck. Well painting. Select source and destination wells on 96-well plates (9 mm SLAS pitch). Protocol builder. Aspirate, dispense, mix, tip change — with volumes validated and dead-zones checked against the envelope. Generate. The protocol becomes motion blocks in the sequence editor: a 44-step pipetting program with per-move timing, ready to simulate in 3D and export as Python, G-code, or C++.
The gantry underneath
A typical bench footprint is 500 × 500 mm with 100 mm of Z and a 2–3.5 kg moving mass (pipettor plus tips). That sizes to an SBA45 XX′YZ gantry on NEMA 17 motors — stepper with a 3:1 gearbox for cost, or servo for speed headroom — with an LSA45 lead-screw Z at a 6.35 mm lead. Repeatability is ±0.05 mm, comfortably inside a 9 mm well pitch.
| Axis | Actuator | Why |
|---|---|---|
| X / X′ | SBA45 500 mm belt, dual synchronized | wide bridge span, light load |
| Y | SBA45 500 mm belt | carries the Z and pipettor |
| Z | LSA45 100 mm lead screw, 6.35 mm lead | self-locking, 150 mm/s, precise dip depth |
Protocol timing you can trust
The sequence editor sums every block's duration, so a protocol's run time is known before anything moves — 88 s for 44 steps in a typical plate-to-plate transfer. The same program drives the 3D simulation, the digital twin, and the controller; nothing is hand-animated, and the clock matches.
Incubator and environmental variants
Requests for incubator-rated actuators (37 °C, 95% RH, CO₂) and wash-down units come through regularly. Those are engineered variants rather than catalog SKUs; the engine sizes the motion and flags the environment as a quoted item, with a contact — it will not invent an IP rating.
Size it yourself in about a minute
Type the task — payload, travel, speed — and the Engineering Decision Engine returns a validated, priced 3D system with the torque margins, inertia check, and cycle-time math shown. Free to design and quote.
Frequently asked
Can the engine program the pipetting protocol?
Yes. The Assay Designer turns a well map and protocol into motion blocks in the sequence editor, which you can edit, simulate, save, and export to the controller.
What plate formats are supported?
96-well SLAS-format plates at 9 mm pitch, with tip racks and reservoirs on the deck. 384-well mapping is a quoted customization.
Is the system incubator-compatible?
Not as a catalog item. Humidity, CO₂, and 37 °C operation are handled as an engineered variant; ask in the engine and it will route you to an engineer with the sizing already done.