Performance Assessment of the VIAFLO 96 handheld 96-channel pipette

Introduction

The standard method of determining a pipette’s liquid delivery performance is measuring the weight of the transferred liquid. Every channel of a multichannel pipette is measured by taking up to ten gravimetric readings. However, for liquid handling systems with 96- or 384-channels this method is neither feasible nor economic because it is a time intensive process. An alternative method is photometry. It allows working with microplates and thus assessing 96- and 384-channels in quick succession. Integra provides an optimized measurement protocol, which combines both gravimetric and photometric measurements to minimize time expenditure and achieve confident results. If the required equipment is not readily available, commercial systems, such as the Artel® MVS® Multichannel Verification System, can be used. The Artel MVS offers a user friendly and standardized approach for the validation of liquid handling performance in the test volume range of 10 nl to 350 μl and provides results which are traceable to the International Systems of Units.

In this technical note we present accuracy and precision data for VIAFLO 96-channel pipetting heads, measured using the Artel MVS by Advanced Instruments.