Chemistry: molecular biology and microbiology – Apparatus – Bioreactor
Patent
1994-06-28
1996-06-11
Beisner, William H.
Chemistry: molecular biology and microbiology
Apparatus
Bioreactor
435809, 422104, 422 65, 219218, 219385, 219428, C12M 102, C12M 138
Patent
active
055255124
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
TECHNICAL FIELD
The invention relates to an incubator, especially for receiving sample containers, comprising a housing which can be opened on the front side, and a set of carrier trays which are disposed in the housing and are intended for the sample containers, which may or may not be removable.
STATE OF THE ART
There exist varying designs of such devices, where usually at least the inner temperature can be controlled or set to a specific value in accordance with the respective application. Especially with today's ever growing fields of application, for example, in clinical diagnostics, in quality control laboratories of the pharmaceutical industry, in pharmaceutical research and development and in biotechnology, higher demands are being made, however, on the quality of the inner atmosphere, which can correspondingly also be controlled, for example, with respect to its composition, moisture or proportion of different components.
With respect to the aforementioned fields of application there has also existed since the increased employment of handling robots the need to use such automatic machines also for constantly repeating handling steps, a state that causes a number of problems, not least also with regard to the incubators that are used. These problems could be solved only unsatisfactorily to date with the known devices of the aforementioned kind. Thus, for example, the necessary access to the interior of the incubator for the purpose of charging with the sample containers or removing in the interim for manipulating the content of the individual sample containers was difficult, insofar as such steps were supposed to be possible, on the one hand, manually via an operator and, on the other hand, automatically via the handling robot, during which procedure, however, any risk of an accident has to be ruled out in any case. Since the incubator is usually charged initially by hand at the start of a test cycle, a simple, fast and exact positioning of the individual sample containers relative to the handling robot must be possible a feature that cannot, however, be guaranteed with the prior art devices.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The object of the present invention is to improve an incubator of the aforementioned kind in such a manner that the aforementioned drawbacks of such known devices are avoided and that an advantageous use is also possible in a simple manner and precisely with respect to a handling robot.
The problem is solved with an incubator of the aforementioned kind in accordance with the present invention in that the carrier trays exhibit guide elements for the sample containers, which partially envelop the sample containers shape-lockingly and fix their relative position. Thus, even if the individual sample containers are inserted by hand, an accurate positioning of the same relative to the handling robot can be guaranteed in a simple manner without having to take complicated and protracted precautionary measures that would only prolong unnecessarily the sequence, for example, of a test cycle.
According to another especially preferred embodiment of the invention, the guide elements can form slide-in vats, which are open on the front and rear side, for the sample containers, whereby the front and rear side has one door each, whose two contact surfaces rest in the closed state against the sample containers and thus fix their position in the slide-in vats. Thus, apart from the customary front-sided door, the interior of the incubator is also accessible by way of a rear-sided door, a feature that allows the work area of a handling robot, accessing the interior, for example, via the front door, to be separated from the work area of an operator, accessing the interior of the incubator via the rear-sided door. After the operator has placed the individual sample containers into the slide-in vats, the position of the sample containers can be determined with accuracy by simply closing the door or both doors, so that the handling robot, which subsequently accesses the sample containers at some arbitra
REFERENCES:
patent: 3205033 (1965-09-01), Stentz
patent: 3715148 (1973-02-01), Beals
patent: 3834778 (1974-09-01), Morrison et al.
patent: 4630873 (1986-12-01), Volker et al.
patent: 4720463 (1988-01-01), Farber et al.
patent: 5149654 (1992-09-01), Gross et al.
Leichtfried Franz E.
Pieler Christian
Beisner William H.
Robocon Labor und Industrieroboterges m.b.H.
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