Would you believe that it is possible to have an autosampler for liquid samples for about U$100? Would you also believe that YOU can be able to integrate it to virtually any measuring equipment in your laboratory?

Believe it or not, the answers are YES and YES. Here, I will show you how it can be done.

Before that, lets make sure we are talking about the same thing. Here, I am talking about autosamplers used for chemical analyses. These equipment often come together with the measuring instruments. Autosamplers are not cheap: prices between U$15,000 and U$30,000 are common, and some beasts cost around U$100,000. Here I show that it is possible to setup an autosampler that can substitute some of those expensive alternatives at a cost of around U$100.

And I also show you that this is easy, demanding NO KNOWLEDGE OF ELECTRONICS or communication protocols. Do you ever know what I am talking about? To be honest, I cannot even say that I do! I know nothing about electronics or communication protocols, except that the traditional way of putting machines to talk to each other involves deep knowledge of these two subjects. Well, I tell you: No more! You can make machines talk to each other, provided they can both be controlled by a computer, without having a clue about electronics or communication protocols.

Recently I realized that there is a much easier way to integrate instruments than the traditional electronics-communication protocol duo. I am talking about SCRIPTING. Scripting is a simple way of writing computer programs that allows the integration of different sofware in a very useful and powerful. This was not a surprise to me, since I have some background in programming, and looked like a natural development of the field. In fact, scripting is a popular tool for spamming and gamming. What was surprising to me was to find that apparently no one (if you knew about this sorry!) used this to integrate instruments in a laboratory! Because of that, I decided to write a paper about this, that was recently accepted for publication : Carvalho, M. C. Integration of analytical instruments with computer scripting. Journal of Laboratory Automation, in press, 2013.

With scripting, you can synchronically control different devices without physical (electronic) connection between them, which means that you can use whatever devices please you.

Robotic arms could be very useful for automating tasks in a laboratory, but they are underused. Robotic arms can cost a lot of money, but there are some amazingly cheap robotic arms. Particularly, there is a model that costs less than $100, including computer control via USB. I am talking about the OWI 535 robotic arm kit.

When I saw that for sale at the local hobby shop, I went there immediately and got one for me. It took me some hours to assemble it (it does not come mounted) but after that it worked very well, including the computer control. However, the software that comes with it was not very amenable to programming. To overcome that, I used Autoit, a poweful scripting language. This way, I became able to program the robot movements in any way I wanted.

The next step was to try to use the robotic arm as an autosampler. After many trials, I reached the conclusion that I needed to modify the robotic arm a little in order that it would be more useful for my purposes. First, I removed the silly light bulb; then, I also got rid of the claw. I also added a 5V power suplly connected to the power line, instead of batteries, the deffault setup ("Hey, you said no electronics!", ok, but this is so easy that I think it cannot be considered "knowledge" of electronics). It was important to get rid of the batteris because this increased reproducibility of movements considerably (batteries get old, and the consequence was that robot movements got slower with time). Also, I glued a stainless stell 1/8" tube to the extremity of the arm in order that it would be my sampling needle.

With the modified robotic arm, including the sripting code in AutoIt, I was prepared to try to setup the autosampler. Then, I placed a sample tray nearby the arm, and did several tests to determine the movement of the arm to reach the vials. As you can see in the videos below, I was successful:

The next step was to synchronize the robotic arm movements with the measuring equipment. I tried with teo different setups, two different total organic carbon analyzers from two different brands. In one case, I even managed to include isotope ratio measurements, all controlled by scripting. Watch the videos below to check my claims:

If I did with those two, I could have done with any other equipment, as long as it had computer control, which is the norm nowadays. Therefore, the robotic arm is really a universal liquid autosampler. And remember: it costs less than U$100.

To do the same as I did, you only need 1) To buy the robotic arm kit; 2) To do some modifications to it; 3) To use AutoIt to control it together with the measuring equipment.

Among the necessary actions, the most difficult is probably writing the scripts. If you have experience with programming, it won't be difficult. If not, it will take some time, but I am sure you can learn.

BUT THERE IS AN EVEN EASIER WAY IF YOU WANT TO GIVE THIS U$100 AUTOSAMPLER A TRY. I prepared a complete FAST START GUIDE with detailed explanations about everything you need to do, including AutoIt and the modifications to the robotic arm. You can get it from me for only U$19. Add this to the cost of the robot, and, depending on your luck, you may still be under the U$100 mark.

You might be asking: "Why would I do that?". Apart from the obvious reason of saving money for your laboratory, there are some other reasons:
-You will learn new skills and become able to achieve even more using robotic arms.
-You can demonstrate to your boss that you are trying to improve the laboratory while saving money.
-By saving money at your laboratory, you will be a more precious asset. There are 2 kinds of employees: those that cost money and those that bring money. Which one do you think your boss preffers?

So, I sincerely suggest you to give the robotic arm autosampler a try. And, if you want faster results, buy my fast-start guide and save a lot of time. In my guide I include the functions of the AutoIt code to control the robot, among other code examples. Trust me, this took me time to write. For only U$19 you can have all this and go straight to the setup of the autosampler itself.

Finally, if you liked the idea but don't want to write scripts, write to me and we can think about customized solutions for your laboratory, at a much lower price than you could ever immagine.

Thank you for your time! Sincerely,
Matheus Carvalho, PhD.
email: 100dollarautosampler@gmail.com

Buy the FAST START GUIDE and build your own U$100 dollar autosampler easily:

$19.00 USD

By clicking on "buy now", you will be transferred to a paypal payment interface. After you pay, I will send you a PDF with the FAST START GUIDE, and the scripting files for AutoIt, including the functions to control the robotic arm, and some sample codes.