I have been using Phoenix for more than two years and so far there were no issues with maintenance. Wash the needles and nano-dispenser before and after the runs and you are good to go. Electrostatic effects have been seen in a way of drops being positioned on the side of the flat bottom plate, but the drops do not climb too high in my case probably because I'm using fairly "large" drops (200 + 200 nl). No matter how robust the system is, there will be always a way to break it.
Once in a while I get large crystal that can be used for data collection, but in most of the cases optimization in hanging 1+1 uL drops is required. What I found quite difficult to do is to choose the appropriate protein concentration when moving from 200+200nL to 1+1 uL. Sometimes protein should be diluted 3-4 times, sometimes it shouldn't. How others are approaching this issue? Vaheh -----Original Message----- From: CCP4 bulletin board [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Anastassis Perrakis Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2008 8:23 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [ccp4bb] crystallisation robot > More recently, I've looked at all of the crystallization robot > vendors. > For single lab users, all of the systems work well. Systems like > the Hydra > or Mosquito are less automatic, but provide the basic functions for > crystallization trial setup. For more of a user facility with a large > number of users from several groups, you want more automation to avoid > protocols that can damage the components, like alignment or > breakage of > the needles. You also want to consider the total annual cost of > expendables and maintenance. There are two major kinds of "a user facility with a large number of users from several groups" a. One with an operator: then buy what the operator likes ;-) basically all machines do work b. NO operator: buy something that is hard to break and needs minimal maintenance We are in b. and happy with our Mosquito for 4 years or more now, although I am sure the other choices mentioned are also clearly fine. A.
