Any recommendations of automation friendly plate seals that are breathable and that work well with automated peelers?
are these for cells?
Yeah
I haven’t had experience these with plate peelers, however, I would ask for some samples and try it out. Let me know if you need a point of contact.
I’d love a contact, preferably one that has had experience with customers using them with an XPeel.
@smohler: I cannot share a contact but I’ve learned Tecan ran a project where a customer was doing this in the US. It was using Kbiosystems’ Chameleon sealer with breathable plate seals for cells. However, one should be warned that technically they are not intended to be peeled and the product notes this. (we learned that after the fact…).
Here’s some internal feedback/experience whilst trying to set this up robustly: they can be peeled most of the time, but one should expect intermittent failures as they are paper-like and tear apart unlike the plastic or foil seals that stay intact. Sometimes they are totally fine at being removed, other times it might not come off nicely and leave you with ¼ of a plate still covered or even just a tiny corner where a few wells are obscured. If you are lucky then the tips pierce this. Even if you make it past that without errors, it complicates downstream steps as you might expect. Obviously this gets progressively worse if the plate is undergoing multiple seals/peels from residue or trailing seal material.
From the sounds of it, I would second chips-a-hoai’s comment: try getting your hands on samples and test it to see if you can get it working robust and reproducible.
Alternatively, perhaps worth investigating Microclime lids ( Search Beckman Coulter Life Sciences) or the Enzyscreen sandwich covers ( Enzyscreen - Functions & use of sandwich covers)?. Circumvents the peeling issue by downscaling it to “delidding”.
Difficult… We ended up using two breathable tapes on top of each other to be able to peel them off again.