HydraTM-96 Microdispenser--now five years old--are a common item in many laboratories. Anyone continually burdened with handling multiple 96-well plates probably would throw down the pipetter and smile if they saw one these blue beauties unpacked in their laboratory. In 1997, Robbins Scientific (Sunnyvale, Calif.) introduced the Hydra-384, the latest in their line of precision microdispensers.


The Hydra-384 Microdispenser
The Hydra-384 features 384 glass syringes with stainless steel, Teflon-coated syringe needles, allowing simultaneous access to all 384 wells of a microplate. The Teflon coating provides a uniform hydrophobic surface so a fine drop forms at the end of each needle when fluid is dispensed. The glass syringe barrels are held in a fixed array centered along an X-Y grid that corresponds to dead center of each well of a 384-well microplate. Robbins recently developed an automated plate positioning and wash system to position plates under the dispensing head. In...

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