Furthermore the picker is equipped with plate handling servers which allow the instrument to process up to 80 input dishes without any human intervention. Including loading times, this instrument should be capable of handling 10,000 daily samples in roughly 5 hours. The picker features a rotating turret of tungsten needles. These needles are cleaned in a water jet station and heat sterilized in a small furnace .
High throughput is achieved by performing the various steps in parallel .
Wash needle in high pressure water jet. Sterilize needle in furnace . Plunge needle several times into well containing sterile growth medium. When picking m13 plaques, the input dishes are backlit using a collimated light source. Plaques are revealed as bright points against a dim background of scattered light.