6-foot 6-inch tall robot places specimens in front of high-velocity brass nozzles.

ARUP Laboratories, Salt Lake City, a national clinical and anatomic pathology reference laboratory and a leader in laboratory research and development, teamed up with Motoman Inc, based inWest Carrollton, Ohio, a leader in robotic automation, and the University of Utah’s College of Engineering, to devise a one-of-a-kind automated thawing and mixing workcell.

The workcell, encased in a polycarbonate safety enclosure, is approximately 6 feet 6 inches tall and includes a six-axis robotic arm that gathers samples as they travel across ARUP’s exclusive automated transport and sorting system. The robot places the specimens in front of high-velocity brass nozzles, designed by Prof Terry Ring with the Department of Chemical and Fuels Engineering at the University of Utah’s College of Engineering. With the determined pressure and flow of air required to correctly thaw the frozen specimens, each nozzle blows room-temperature air at a rate of 2 liters per minute per specimen. The 760-nozzle deck expels a combined airflow of 1,520 liters per minute.

Motoman sorting

Air enters the standardized tube carriers through a slit normally used for barcode reading and wraps around each tube, thawing it from all sides. In as little as 15 to 20 minutes, and without detrimental effects on any of the analytes being tested, the specimens are thawed and await the mixing step. In the mixing step, the robot, which can hold up to 10 specimens at once, uses pneumatic pressure-pin cylinders that clamp tightly on the tube caps, preventing leakage. It then rotates the samples through a 270° pattern, allowing the samples to mix thoroughly without forming air bubbles. Immediately after they are mixed, the specimens are placed back on the transport system that takes them to a sorter, which arranges the specimens by the particular tests to be performed. This process sees a throughput of more than 1,000 specimens per hour, replacing a manual process that required nearly 1½ hours to complete.

Motoman sorting

To ensure that no aerosolized, infectious viral particles can enter the laboratory’s air supply if a specimen spills, an exhaust hood above the workcell utilizes four large, high-efficiency particulate air filters to displace air from the workcell at a rate that is approximately double that dispersed through the nozzles.

ARUP Laboratories, an enterprise of the University of Utah and its Department of Pathology, is a national clinical and anatomic pathology reference laboratory. With more than 1,800 employees, the organization offers more than 2,000 tests and test combinations—ranging from routine screening tests to highly esoteric molecular and genetic assays—for patients throughout the country. Clients include more than half the nation’s university teaching hospitals and children’s hospitals, as well as multihospital groups, major commercial laboratories, group purchasing organizations, military and government facilities, and major clinics. ARUP’s research and development is led by its Institute for Clinical and Experimental Pathology.

Motoman provides robots and complete, fully integrated robotic solutions for a wide variety of medical device technologies, including assembly, packaging, welding, dispensing, and test tube/sample sorting. Motoman robots are used in clean rooms, clinical labs, biopharmaceutical applications, and medical packaging.

www.aruplab.com; www.motoman.com; (800) 242-2787