IntelliXcap 96

The Azenta IntelliXcap Automated Screw Cap Decapper/Recapper 96-format removes and replaces the screw caps on a whole rack of 96 sample tubes in one motion. A rack of capped tubes goes onto the stage, the stage draws in, and a head of 96 cap drivers turns every cap at once — then, after whatever happens to the samples in between, turns them all back on again. Azenta states the instrument is capable of de-capping a complete rack of 96 tubes in as little as 20 seconds.

What makes the instrument practical across a tube estate is the interchangeable cartridge cap driver system. The drivers that engage the caps live in a cartridge that the instrument ejects and reloads itself; Azenta states a cartridge allows a format change between different tube types in less than 2 minutes, with no specialist intervention needed to change cartridge drivers, and that cartridges exist for both internal and external thread screw-cap tubes. Torque is applied electrically rather than pneumatically — Azenta states electric torque control means less persistent wear on cap drivers.

Revolution drives the instrument over RS232, in the IntelliXcap serial command mode. A mover presents and collects the rack at the stage; the schedule calls the decap and recap cycles, and can also drive the cartridge exchange, the stage, and the safety door. The driver targets the standard 96-format screw-cap instrument — the Acoustic, Extended Height, 48-format and 24-format IntelliXcap variants Azenta also sells are not declared as supported models.

At a glance

Format	96-format racked screw-cap tubes, a full rack at a time
Decap speed	A complete rack of 96 tubes in as little as 20 seconds, per Azenta
Tube compatibility	All Azenta sample storage tubes, plus — with the relevant cartridge — tubes Azenta names as LVL, Micronic, Matrix, Nunc and Greiner
Cap threads	Internal and external thread screw caps, by cartridge
Connection	Serial, RS232 — 9600 8N1, no flow control, fixed by the command set
Plate locations	One
Revolution control	Decap, recap, stage in/out, cartridge load/eject, counter reset, status, head recovery, safety door

Specifications

Azenta publishes the following in the IntelliXcap Technical Specification datasheet (42017-SD-2). Values below are the IntelliXcap 96 column where the datasheet separates models.

System height	320 mm
System width	256 mm
System depth	464.4 mm
Stage height	31.7 mm
Stage width	138 mm
Stage distance (when ejected)	136.5 mm
System weight	26.80 kg
Speed	>20 seconds per rack
Decapping torque	Up to 9.5 N/cm — not a user-configurable parameter
Recapping torque	Up to 5.5 N/cm — not a user-configurable parameter
Temperature, operation	0–40 °C (32–104 °F); Azenta notes that use at 40 °C (104 °F) or above for an extended period may reduce the contrast of the monochrome LCD
Temperature, transport and storage	15–40 °C (59–104 °F)
Relative humidity	10–90% RH, wet bulb 39 °C (102 °F) max, no condensation
Storage humidity	10–70% RH, wet bulb 39 °C (102 °F) max, no condensation
Ingress protection	IP 30 — protection against small foreign bodies >2.5 mm, no protection against water
Dust	0.1 mg/m³ and below, non-conductive levels
Pollution degree	For use in a Pollution Degree 2 environment; Azenta states decontamination with hydrogen peroxide gas must be avoided as it will damage the electronic parts
Supply voltage	100–120 VAC 1/N/PE / 220–240 VAC 1/N/PE, IEC 320 plugs only, ground connected at all times
Maximum power consumption	500 W
Idle power consumption	100 W
Noise	Azenta states the machine operates below the noise emissions level of <70 dB(A)
UI connection	RS232 cable
Air requirement	N/A
Part number	46-8012
Extended stage for automation	46-8112, suitable for IntelliXcap 24, 48 and 96

The torque figures are the specification that decides whether this instrument suits your tubes. Azenta publishes up to 9.5 N/cm decapping and up to 5.5 N/cm recapping on the 96-format instrument — substantially lower than the 30 N/cm and 15 N/cm it publishes for the 24- and 48-format instruments — and explicitly notes that torque is not user-configurable. A tube and cap combination that needs more than that cannot be made to work from a schedule.

The other integration-critical line is the stage. The datasheet gives a stage distance when ejected of 136.5 mm, and Azenta sells a separate Extended Stage for Automation (46-8112); whether a mover can reach the rack at all is set by which stage is fitted, not by anything the driver does.

Two figures differ between Azenta’s own sources. The product page lists overall dimensions of 340 × 256 × 464 mm (H × W × D) and a weight of 22 kg, against 320 mm high and 26.80 kg in the datasheet; and the product page’s specification table gives an ambient operating range of 15–35 °C where its own feature list and the datasheet say 5–40 °C and 0–40 °C respectively. The datasheet values are the ones published above. Confirm both against the instrument you actually have before you cut a bench.

Supported methods

None of the operations take parameters — each one is a single command to the instrument.

Capping cycles

• Decap — run a decap cycle on the rack currently on the stage
• Recap — run a recap cycle, returning the caps held on the ejector pins to the tubes

Stage

• Open tray — move the stage out to the load position
• Close tray — move the stage in to the decap/recap position

Cartridge

• Load cartridge — pick up the cartridge currently sitting on the stage
• Eject cartridge — eject the loaded cartridge onto the stage
• Reset cartridge counter — reset the cartridge cycle counter

Status and recovery

• Initialise system — clear errors, reset the error state and run the power-on sequence
• Ask status — read the instrument’s current status back
• Head up — home the Z axis, leaving any caps on the drivers
• Eject caps — home the cap head and eject any caps held on the cap drivers

Safety door

• Safety door open — open the safety door
• Safety door off — disable safety-door operation until the next power cycle
• Safety door on — re-enable safety-door operation

Decap and recap are a pair with state between them. A decap leaves the removed caps held on the instrument’s ejector pins, and the instrument reports itself in a recap-pending state; a recap is only feasible while caps are held, and a decap only while they are not. Ask the wrong one and the instrument replies that the command is not feasible in its current state, and the operation fails. A schedule that decaps a rack must recap that rack — the caps for one rack cannot be parked while another rack is processed.

The three safety-door operations are three different things, and it is worth being precise about which you mean:

• Safety door open physically opens the door, once. The instrument accepts it only in manual mode.
• Safety door off does not move the door — it disables door operation until the next power cycle, and while disabled the door stands open automatically. Power the instrument down and back up and door operation is re-enabled regardless.
• Safety door on re-enables door operation after a safety door off.

Note also that some cycles move the door as a side effect: opening the tray also opens the safety door, and ejecting caps always opens it.

Eject caps, head up and safety door open are manual-mode operations. The instrument accepts them only while it reports itself in its manual state, which makes them recovery tools rather than scheduling primitives — the ones you reach for when a cycle has failed with caps stranded on the drivers, not steps to build a routine method from.

Cartridge handling has one honest limit. The instrument distinguishes standard cartridges, whose driver profile it auto-loads on a load cartridge, from an extended cartridge that additionally requires a profile to be selected afterwards. Revolution issues the load and treats it as done; there is no operation for selecting an extended cartridge’s profile. The cartridge counter is a cycle count for the fitted cartridge — the wear figure a maintenance regime is built on — so reset cartridge counter belongs with fitting a new cartridge and nowhere else.

Integration

Revolution talks to the instrument directly over a serial port — no vendor software sits in between, and there is no PC-side service to install. The serial parameters are fixed by the IntelliXcap command set (9600 baud, 8 data bits, no parity, one stop bit, no flow control) and are set by the driver, so the only thing you configure is which COM port the cable is on.

Every command follows the same three-step exchange: the instrument acknowledges the command, reports that the operation has started, then reports that it is done or that it failed. The driver waits for the completion frame, so a decap operation in a schedule blocks until the instrument says the rack is decapped. Long cycles are bounded by a two-minute per-operation timeout.

The device presents one plate location. Revolution opens the stage automatically before any pick or place at that location, so a schedule does not need to sequence open tray around handovers — if the stage is already out, the redundant open is recognised and treated as success. Decap and recap both require Revolution to know a rack is on the location and will fail if it does not, so the transfer that delivers the rack has to be part of the schedule. Initialising the device opens the port and runs the instrument’s power-on and clear-errors sequence; uninitialising closes the port.

Prerequisites

• The instrument must be set to its IntelliXcap serial command mode — with the front panel in its own control mode, the RS232 commands are not what the instrument is listening for.
• The cartridge fitted must match the tubes. Format and thread type are physical; a schedule cannot switch between internal and external thread tubes without an operator, or at minimum a cartridge exchange sequence, in between.
• The cap torque the tubes need must be within what the instrument applies — see the specification note above. Torque is not adjustable.
• A stage the mover can reach — the standard stage and the extended automation stage present the rack differently.
• The safety door must be enabled, and its interlock respected, for normal automated operation. The disable is not a configuration setting; it lapses at the next power cycle.
• Every decap in a schedule needs its matching recap, on the same rack, before another rack is presented.

Device configuration

Property	Purpose
COM Port Settings	The serial port the instrument is connected to. Baud rate, parity, stop bits, data bits and flow control are fixed by the command set and are not configurable.

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