JPH0277652A - Dividedly pouring device - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To speed up operation of divided pouring without deteriorating divided pouring accuracy in trace pouring in the mul order by a method wherein rising speed at the time of taking a divided pouring chip off from solution is slowed while speed of other vertical motions is made faster. CONSTITUTION:A device is constituted of a column 3 including a plunger 5 which moves in a communicating hole 4 to the atmosphere, a tip 2 which mounts and removes a divided pouring chip 1, a plunger driving mechanism which drives a pulse motor 6a to move the plunger 5, a vertical motion mechanism which moves a part from the tip 2 to the plunger driving mechanism vertically, a vessel carrying mechanism which carries a vessel 9 containing solution and a controller 11 which controls operation of all of the driving mechanisms. In addition, a means for switching over speed of the vertical motion mechanism is provided so that rising speed at the time of taking the chip 6 off from the solution in the vessel 6 is made slow, and faster vertical motion speed is employed for other vertical motions.

Description

[Detailed Description of the Invention] [Field of Industrial Application] The present invention relates to a dispensing device used in biological sample preparation devices, automatic chemical analyzers, etc. The present invention relates to a dispensing device suitable for cases where high speed is strongly required.

[Conventional technology]

Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 106341/1983 discloses a dispensing device used in biological sample preparation devices, automatic chemical analysis devices, etc., in which a constant speed is set for the vertical movement of a part that sucks and discharges liquid by moving a plunger. I was using it.

[Problem to be solved by the invention]

When the amount to be dispensed is small, on the order of μΩ, in order to prevent the dispensing accuracy from deteriorating, care must be taken to avoid droplets from adhering to the tip of the dispensing device when separating the part that comes into contact with the liquid from the liquid. be. The amount of this droplet increases as the viscosity coefficient of the liquid increases and as the rate of rise of the tip of the dispensing device away from the liquid increases. Therefore, in order to prevent droplets from adhering, it is necessary to slow down the rising speed when separating the tip of the dispensing device from the liquid. For example, if the liquid is water and the part that comes in contact with the liquid is a dispensing tip, the dispensing tip may be made of plastic. For example, at a rising speed of 20 m/s, the actual dispensed amount when dispensing with a target value of 1 μΩ will be less than the target value. −
It varies from 0.1 μΩ to +0.5 μQ, depending on the droplet adhering to the chip. However, the rising speed is set to Low/
If the amount is lowered to s, the actual dispensing amount with a target value of 1 μQ can be kept within the range of ±0.1 μQ from the target value. The above-mentioned conventional technology does not give sufficient consideration to this point.

Since the speed of all the vertical movement operations was constant, there was a problem that all the vertical movement operations had to be performed at a slow speed to prevent the droplets from adhering to each other, which increased the time required for one dispensing process. .

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION An object of the present invention is to solve the above-mentioned problems and to provide a control method that can speed up the dispensing operation without deteriorating the dispensing accuracy in micro-quantity dispensing on the μQ order.

[Means to solve the problem]

In the vertical movement of the above-mentioned dispensing operation, the dispensing accuracy in μa order dispensing becomes worse when the driving speed is increased. 2. A rising action to release the dispensing device, and a rising action to release the tip of the dispensing device from the liquid in the container after discharging the liquid.
a descending motion to place the tip of the dispensing device into the liquid,
When using a dispensing tip, increasing the drive speed does not affect the dispensing accuracy in the vertical movement when fitting the dispensing tip into the tip.Therefore, the purpose of the present invention is to change the speed of the vertical movement. This is achieved by providing a control method that slows down the rising speed of the tip of the dispensing device when it is separated from the liquid, and uses a faster moving speed for other vertical movement operations.

In addition, to further speed up the dispensing operation, during the upward movement to separate the tip of the dispensing device from the liquid, the rising speed is slowed down while the tip of the dispensing device is in contact with the liquid. It is preferable to adopt a control method that increases the rising speed after the tip of the device no longer makes contact.

[Last month]

In the vertical movement mechanism of the dispensing device, the vertical movement speed switching means is switched depending on the content of the operation.

In other words, the moving speed is set so that the normal up-down movement moves at the faster speed, and the set moving speed is changed just before the upward movement to separate the tip of the dispensing device from the liquid. For example, if a dispensing tip is used to aspirate and discharge a liquid, and the vertical movement speed is constant as in the conventional technology, and the vertical movement stroke is 50■, the vertical movement will decrease as described above. Movement speed is 1
It must be set around 0■/S, so the vertical movement when inserting the dispensing tip, the vertical movement to perform suction in a container containing liquid to be aspirated, and the up and down movement to perform suction in a container containing liquid to be aspirated, It takes as much as 30 seconds for a total of six vertical movements for discharging. On the other hand, if we apply the speed switching control described above and move the tip of the dispensing device at a rate of 40μ/s except for the operation of separating the dispensing device tip from the liquid, the time required for the total of 6 vertical movements will be reduced to 17 seconds. The total time for one batch production can be reduced by 13 seconds. D.N.
In biological sample preparation operations such as A, there are nearly 100 dispensing operations in one process, so the speed switching control according to the present invention can shorten the processing time by 20 minutes or more compared to the conventional method.

As mentioned above, the dispensing time can be further shortened by changing the speed during the upward movement of separating the dispensing device tip from the liquid.
w, that is, move at 10■/S for 1 second, and the remaining 40
If (1) is moved at a rate of 40 (2)/S, the time required for a total of six vertical movement operations can be reduced to 11 seconds, and the time for the entire dispensing operation can be reduced by 19 seconds. As in the previous example, when the dispensing operation is 100 times, this speed switching control results in 3 times faster dispensing than the conventional method.
Process processing time can be reduced by 0 minutes or more.

[Embodiment] The configuration of an embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to FIG.

1. This device consists of a tip part 2 for attaching and detaching a dispensing tip 1, a body part 3 located above the tip part 2, an atmosphere communication hole 4 that penetrates the tip part 2 and the body part 3, and a plunger that moves inside the atmosphere communication hole 4. 5. A plunger drive mechanism 6 consisting of a pulse motor 6a, a coupling 6b, a ball screw 6c, a plunger holding member 6d, a plunger vertical movement section 6e, and a bearing member 6f.
It consists of a motor 7a, a vertical moving part 7b, and a bearing member 7c.

A vertical movement mechanism 7 that moves the portion from the tip 2 up and down to the plunger drive mechanism 6, and a transport mechanism for the dispensing tip 1 (
(not shown), a container transport mechanism 10 that transports a container 9 containing liquid 8 (moves perpendicular to the plane of the paper), a plunger drive mechanism 6, a controller 11 that controls the operations of the vertical movement mechanism and transport mechanism 10, and a plunger drive A dispensing tip extrusion member 1 that moves along the outside of the body portion 3 in conjunction with the mechanism 6
2, a chip removal member 14, and a holding member 13.

This dispensing device transfers the liquid to another container according to the flow chart shown in FIG. First, an operation 15 is performed to position the dispensing tip l transport mechanism below the tip 2, an operation 16 is performed to lower the tip 2 using the vertical movement mechanism 7, and the dispensing tip 1 is attached. Proceed to the ascent 17 of 2. First, the container transport mechanism 10 performs an operation 18 to position the container 9 below the dispensing tip 1, and the vertical movement mechanism 7 lowers the dispensing tip 1 until it is immersed in the liquid 8. Action 19
After performing this, the plunger 5 is moved by the plunger drive mechanism 6.
Suction 2 of the liquid 8 in the dispensing tip 1 by raising it by a predetermined amount
0 and then change the vertical movement speed to a slower speed 21
After performing this, the dispensing tip 1 is raised 22 by the vertical movement mechanism 7, and an operation 23 is performed in which another container 9 to which the liquid 8 is to be transferred is positioned below the dispensing tip 1 by the container transport mechanism 10. After switching the vertical movement speed to a higher speed 24, the dispensing tip 1 is moved by the vertical movement mechanism 7.
After the dispensing tip 1 is inserted into the container 9 by performing an operation 25 of lowering the liquid 8, the plunger 5 is lowered by a predetermined amount by the plunger drive mechanism 6, and the liquid 8 is discharged 26. Next, the vertical movement speed is switched to a slow speed 21, and the vertical movement mechanism 7 raises the dispensing tip 1 and moves it away from the liquid 22. Then, the dispensing tip transport mechanism (not shown) 1. An operation 27 is carried out to transport the discarding station (not shown) for discarding the dispensing tip 1 below the dispensing device tip 2, and here the plunger drive mechanism 6 is driven to push out the dispensing tip extrusion member 12. Then, the tip removing member 14 is pushed downward, an operation 28 is performed to remove the dispensing tip 1, and the process returns to the first operation 15. Incidentally, before returning to the initial operation, an operation 24 of switching the vertical movement speed to a faster speed is performed.

The method of switching the vertical movement speed is to use a pulse motor as the motor 7a, and apply high frequency pulses during high speed movement and low frequency pulses during low speed movement;
It is conceivable to use a DC motor with an encoder as the motor 7a, and to switch the voltage applied to the DC motor.

Although the flowchart in FIG. 2 shows an example in which the container and the dispensing tip move laterally, the operation sequence is the same even when the tip of the dispensing device moves laterally.

An example of a time chart of each dispensing operation under control according to the flowchart of FIG. 2 is shown in FIG. 4.

This means that the vertical movement stroke is ~50m, the slow vertical movement speed is 10mm/s, and the fast movement is 40a/s.
This is the case. Comparing this with the conventional flowchart shown in FIG. 5, the time required for the -th dispensing operation is reduced by 13 seconds, and the effect of switching the speed of vertical movement is clear.

In addition, in order to further speed up the dispensing operation, as shown in the flowchart of FIG. It is preferable to control the liquid to rise at a rising speed 29, and after the liquid and the dispensing tip are no longer in contact with each other, to perform speed switching 30 and to control the liquid to rise at a fast rising speed 31.
For example, if the first 10-stroke in contact with the liquid is raised at 10 ■/s and the remaining 40-strokes are moved at 40 a/s, this one raising motion takes 3 seconds, and the entire dispensing motion takes an additional 6 The required time can be shortened by 30 - times of dispensing operations.
It can be done within seconds.

〔Effect of the invention〕

As explained above, in the dispensing device according to the present invention,
When separating the part that makes contact with the liquid from the dispensing device, the rising speed is kept low, and faster movement speeds are used for other vertical movements, increasing the speed of dispensing without deteriorating dispensing accuracy. can.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of the dispensing device viewed from the side, FIG. 2 is a flowchart showing a control method according to the present invention, FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing another control method according to the present invention, and FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing the control method according to the present invention. Operation time chart of Nigaru dispensing device, No. 5
The figure is an operation time chart showing an example of the operation of a conventional dispensing device. DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1... Dispensing tip, 2... Tip part, 7a... Motor of vertical movement mechanism, 6... Plunger drive mechanism, 11
···controller. ￥-ar；a Part S Figure t

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. An atmosphere communication hole, a body section that includes a plunger that moves within the atmosphere communication hole, a tip section that is connected under the body section and sucks and discharges liquid, and a plunger drive mechanism that drives a pulse motor to move the plunger. , the tip portion, the body portion,
In a dispensing device consisting of a vertical movement mechanism that moves the plunger drive mechanism in the vertical direction, a container transport mechanism, and a controller that controls the operation of all of the above drive mechanisms, a speed switching means for the vertical movement mechanism is provided, and the liquid in the container is A dispensing device characterized in that when the tip part is released, its rising speed is slowed down, and in other cases of vertical movement, a faster vertical movement speed is used.