Tecan HP D300

The Tecan D300e Digital Dispenser dispenses picoliter to microliter volumes straight into the assay plate, drop by drop, with no source plate and no serial dilution. Fluid is loaded into a single-use dispensehead cassette and the instrument does the rest, which is what makes it attractive for dose-response and synergy work. Revolution’s job is to run a protocol that was authored in Tecan’s own D300eControl software, and — where the instrument sits in a robotic cell — to get the plate and the cassette in and out of it.

Two products share the name. Tecan lists the original D300 Digital Dispenser (part 30064844) in its published phase-out table as shipped until December 2015, with end of support July 2024. The current instrument is the D300e, and Tecan has since introduced the Duo Digital Dispenser, which it describes as merging the strengths of the D300e and the Uno Single Cell Dispenser, with T8+ and D4+ cassette “dispensing capabilities … unchanged and backwards compatible with the D300e”. The Revolution driver targets the D300e.

At a glance

Technology	Non-contact digital dispensing from single-use dispensehead cassettes; no source plate
Volume range	11 pl to 10 µl per well, depending on fluid class and cassette
Plate formats	12–1536 well plates, 6–47 mm plate height
Instrument software	D300eControl (required — Revolution runs protocol files authored there)
Revolution control	Run a protocol file by path; move the stage to the load position
Robotic handling	Plate transfers plus automated cassette load and unload via a handover tray and a dedicated cassette gripper
Driver device class	HPTecanD300

Specifications

Dispensing

Published by Tecan in the D300e specification sheet (399178). Figures are per cassette type and fluid; Tecan does not publish a single headline number.

	T8+ Dispensehead Cassette	D4+ Dispensehead Cassette
Dispenseheads per cassette	8	4
Minimum dispense volume	13 pl (DMSO), 11 pl (aqueous + surfactant), 12 pl (aqueous + surfactant + glycerol), 11 pl (master mix)	1 nl
Minimum dispense volume (total dispense volume > 10 µl)	1 nl	1 nl
Maximum dispense volume per well	10 µl	10 µl
Minimum fill volume	2 µl (DMSO), 4 µl (aqueous and master mix)	50 µl
CV	< 8 %	< 8 %
Maximum total dispense volume	10 µl (DMSO), 20 µl (aqueous, master mix)	200 µl

Tecan qualifies the CV figures: < 8 % for volumes > 100 pl on the T8+ (using 100 % DMSO, or an aqueous test fluid containing 0.1 % Brij-35, or master mixes included in the fluid class list), and < 8 % for volumes > 1 nl on the D4+.

The minimum fill volume is the specification that most often shapes a schedule. It is the volume that has to go into the cassette regardless of how little you intend to dispense, so for precious compound the cassette count, not the plate count, sets your consumption.

Fluids

	T8+	D4+
Small molecules	Max. 800 Da at 10 mM	Max. 800 Da at 10 mM
Biomolecules	300 kDa, 3 mg/ml (DMSO) / 1 mg/ml (aqueous)	300 kDa, 0.3 mg/ml
Biomolecules (second row as published)	10,000 bp, 3 mg/ml (DMSO) / 1 mg/ml (aqueous)	10,000 bp, 0.3 mg/ml
Nanoparticles	Stable suspension of < 1 µm diameter particles at max. 0.5 % w/v	As T8+
Buffer	Total buffer components < 150 mM	As T8+

Tecan states that aqueous solutions require the addition of a surfactant to reduce surface tension and enable priming, and that glycerol content determines the fluid class: Brij-35 at 0.1 %, Triton X-100 at 0.1 % or Tween 20 at 0.3 %, each with a separate class for 0–5 % and 5–20 % glycerol.

Instrument

Dimensions (W x D x H)	47 x 37 x 23 cm
Weight	15 kg
Electrical	100–240 V, 50/60 Hz, 2.6 A
Operating temperature	20–30 °C (68–86 °F)
Humidity	30 % – 80 % RH (operating manual)
Host connection	USB port (operating manual)

Supported methods

• Run protocol — takes one parameter, Protocol Path: the full path of a protocol file authored in D300eControl. The driver checks the file exists before it starts, loads it, assigns fresh cassette IDs, and runs the dispense to completion. The plate layout, concentrations, fluid classes and titration design all live in that file, not in the schedule — Revolution chooses when the protocol runs and which plate is under it.
• Move to load position — moves the stage out to the plate load position. The driver also does this automatically before any pick or place, so a robot never reaches into a stage that is still parked inside the instrument.

Cassette handling is not a schedule operation either; it is bound to the transfer itself. The D300e is configured with four locations — the plate position, the instrument’s own cassette position, a cassette handover position where a robot presents the cassette SBS tray, and a park position for the cassette gripper. When a tray is placed at the handover position, the driver picks up the cassette gripper and loads the cassette into the instrument; when the tray is picked, it unloads it first. Getting the labware permissions right on those four locations is what tells the driver which location is which.

One consequence worth designing around, in Tecan’s own words: “Pausing for long periods during a run is not recommended. If the USB connection to the dispenser is lost, the protocol cannot be resumed … For protocols with aqueous fluids, there is no option to Pause the protocol run.” A schedule should not hold a D300e protocol open while it waits on something slow elsewhere in the cell.

Integration

The driver runs the vendor dispensing API in a separate host process on the instrument PC and talks to it over HTTP, so the D300e’s own event-driven load prompts — plate needed, cassette needed, fluid needed — are answered by that host rather than by an operator at the screen, and a fault in the vendor stack cannot take the scheduler with it.

Prerequisites

• D300eControl must be installed on the instrument PC, and the protocol you intend to run must already have been authored and saved there. Revolution runs protocol files; it does not design plate layouts.
• The D300e host process must be running before the device is initialised in Revolution. Initialising the device also sends the stage to the plate load position.
• Protocol files must be reachable by the host at the exact path passed to the operation. The driver fails the operation rather than the run if the file is missing.
• The four device locations must have labware permissions configured so that the driver can identify the cassette gripper, the cassette SBS tray and the cassette positions. The gripper park and instrument cassette positions should not be reachable directly by a robot or user.

Device configuration

Property	Purpose
Url	Address of the host on the instrument PC. Defaults to http://localhost:1023/hptecand300
Cassette Gripper Object Type	Object type name of the cassette gripper, used to find its park location. Defaults to D300CassetteGripper
Cassette SBS Tray Object Type	Object type name of the tray a robot presents at the handover position. Defaults to D300CassetteTray
Cassette Object Type	Object type name of the cassette itself, used to find the instrument’s cassette position. Defaults to D300Cassette

If you need more of this instrument driven from a schedule, get in touch — the driver is extended on demand.