Courtesy of TTP LabTech
TTP LabTech's comPOUND and mosquito (inset) systems.
With a flash of art deco teal and some vintage engineering decisions, TTP LabTech is making 21st-century science look decidedly retro. Inspired by the pneumatic systems once used to shoot money through tubes in banks, the company's comPOUND storage and retrieval system dispatches chemical vials with a whoosh of air. Its mosquito liquid-handling system, meanwhile, looks a bit like a 35-mm film reel or perhaps a bandolier.
Before comPOUND's debut, chemical libraries lived in walk-in freezers or temperature-controlled buildings that housed robotic storage and retrieval systems. "But a number of companies asked if we could produce something smaller and modular," says Jas Sanghera, commercial director of TTP LabTech of Melbourn, UK.
The company decided that robots and conveyer belts are too bulky and unreliable at subzero storage temperatures. Instead, it designed the freezer-sized pneumatic system, which stores 100,000 ...
