Search these docs, or ask Revo a question — answers link the pages they came from.
PF400 with Rail
The PF400 — Brooks Automation’s PreciseFlex 400 — is a four-axis laboratory robot built around a tall vertical column, which is what makes it useful on a crowded bench: the work envelope is a column rather than a dome, so stacked instruments, hotels and shelves are reachable from a small footprint. Revolution drives it standalone and mounted on Brooks’ linear rail, where the added axis lets one arm serve instruments spread along a bench.
The line originated with Precise Automation, which Brooks Automation announced it was acquiring on 26 April 2021. It is published today as a Brooks Automation product, on brooks.com — not under Azenta, which is the separate life-sciences business that took the Azenta name after the Brooks group split. If you are looking for the current datasheet, look for “PreciseFlex 400”, not “Precise Automation PF400”.
At a glance
Section titled “At a glance”| Axes | Four |
| Vertical (Z) travel | 400, 750 or 1,160 mm |
| Payload | 0.5 kg with Servo Gripper |
| Repeatability | ±0.090 mm |
| Typical speed at TCP | 500 mm/sec |
| Linear rail | 1.0, 1.5 or 2.0 m travel, up to 700 mm/sec, ±0.05 mm repeatability |
| Revolution control | Plate transfers, scheduled through Revolution’s transfer system |
Specifications
Section titled “Specifications”Brooks publishes the following for the PreciseFlex 400.
Performance
Section titled “Performance”Payload, repeatability and typical TCP speed are given in At a glance above. Brooks additionally publishes:
| Maximum acceleration | 2000 mm/sec² |
| Servo gripper | 23 N |
The 0.5 kg payload is the specification to check a workflow against before anything else. It is a small number, and a filled deep-well plate with a lid is a great deal heavier than the empty microplate a cell is usually demonstrated with. Payload is not a figure to establish empirically on a live deck.
Range of motion
Section titled “Range of motion”| Joint | Range |
|---|---|
| Joint 1 (Z) | 400, 750 or 1,160 mm, depending on the column ordered |
| Joint 2 | ±93° |
| Joint 3 | ±168° |
| Joint 4 | ±960° with Servo Gripper |
The Z column length is chosen at order time and cannot be changed later, so it constrains the cell layout permanently — the tallest thing the arm has to reach into has to be inside the column travel.
Brooks publishes two different pairs of horizontal-reach figures for the same robot, and they do not agree. The product page gives 433 mm (standard) and 588 mm (extended); the PreciseFlex 400 datasheet gives 579 mm (standard) and 734 mm (extended), in both cases “with included Servo Gripper”. We have not reconciled the two — confirm the reach of the exact configuration you are quoting with Brooks before you commit a deck layout to it.
Linear rail
Section titled “Linear rail”| Travel options | 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 m |
| Speed | Up to 700 mm/sec |
| Repeatability | ±0.05 mm |
Brooks states the optional linear rail extends the robot’s horizontal reach up to 2 metres. On a long bench this is the difference between one arm and two.
Controls and facilities
Section titled “Controls and facilities”| Communications | 100 Mb Ethernet, TCP/IP and EtherNet/IP |
| Operator interface | Web-based |
| Digital I/O | 12 inputs, 8 outputs at the base of the robot |
| Power | 90–264 VAC auto-selecting, 50–60 Hz; 100–250 W typical operation |
| Programming | Guidance Programming Language (GPL) and the TCP Command Server (TCS) |
Brooks also publishes a design life of 40,000+ hours for the PreciseFlex range.
Safety
Section titled “Safety”Brooks describes the PreciseFlex robots as collaborative, states they are “the fastest collaborative robots available, while meeting the collaborative robot safety standards”, and states they offer high throughput with low collision forces. Brooks does not, in the material we could verify, publish the specific standard numbers, the measured force limits, or a statement that guarding can be omitted.
So treat the collaborative claim as what it is: a property of the arm, not a clearance for your cell. A risk assessment of your own installation is still required — the neighbouring instruments, the labware, the operator’s working posture and the rail travel are yours, not Brooks’. A rail-mounted arm in particular sweeps a much larger volume than the same arm on a fixed base, and the pinch hazards along the rail are part of the cell, not part of the robot.
How Revolution uses it
Section titled “How Revolution uses it”The PF400 is a mover, and movers are not driven by device operations. Revolution schedules plate transfers and the mover executes them through the transfer system, in the same way as the Thermo Orbitor and Stäubli arms. There is no “move plate” operation to call from a method — you describe where labware needs to be, and the scheduler works out the moves. The PF400 driver exposes no device operations at all.
Revolution recognises six PF400 devices, across two driver generations:
| Device | Rail | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| PF400 Robot Generic | No | The arm on its own base |
| PF400 1160 XR (0°) – 2m Track | 2 m | Robot mounted on the carriage at 0° |
| PF400 1160 XR (-90°) – 2m Track | 2 m | Robot mounted on the carriage at −90° |
| PF400 Robot 1160 XR NG | No | Newer-generation driver, RevoWeb teaching |
| PF400 1160 XR 0deg 2m Rail NG | 2 m | Newer-generation driver, 0° mount |
| PF400 1160 XR -90deg 2m Rail NG | 2 m | Newer-generation driver, −90° mount |
The mount orientation matters when you pick the device, not just when you bolt the arm down: the 0° and −90° variants describe the rotation of the robot base on the rail carriage, and the kinematics differ accordingly. Choosing the wrong one gives you a robot whose taught positions do not correspond to the cell. The NG devices are the newer driver generation, which integrates its teaching application with RevoWeb.
Alongside the arm, the same driver provides Revolution’s passive plate stacks designed to be served by a PF400 — the TTPv1 and UKRv2 stacks — which do expose operations for setting and counting their plate contents.
Integration
Section titled “Integration”Revolution connects to the robot over TCP/IP, at a configured host and port.
Prerequisites
Section titled “Prerequisites”- The robot must be commissioned with Brooks’ own tooling, and taught its positions, before Revolution schedules transfers through it. Position teaching is instrument-side work; a mover that has not been taught a position cannot be scheduled to it.
- Every instrument the arm serves must be inside the Z travel of the column that was ordered, and inside the horizontal reach of the configuration fitted — plus the rail travel, where a rail is fitted.
- Labware weight must be within the 0.5 kg payload.
- The robot must be reachable on the network from the Revolution host.
Device configuration
Section titled “Device configuration”| Property | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Robot Host/IPAddress | Address of the robot controller |
| Robot TCP Port | Port the controller’s command interface listens on |
| Default Speed (%) | Speed the driver commands when a move does not specify one |
| GripperOpenClearance | How far the gripper opens clear of the labware |
| TeachBlockGripForce | Grip force used when handling the teach block |
| Safe Home Bounding Box | Volume the arm must be inside to be considered safely homed |
| PlaceOffsetZ | Newer-generation driver only. Vertical offset applied on setdown |
The Safe Home Bounding Box is worth setting deliberately rather than accepting: it is how the driver decides that the arm is parked somewhere harmless, which is exactly the question that matters when a schedule is recovering from an error and the arm’s position is not yet known.
If you need more of this instrument driven from a schedule, get in touch — the driver is extended on demand.