VSpin + Access

The Agilent Microplate Centrifuge — widely known as the VSpin — is a compact, robot-accessible plate centrifuge. Agilent’s design emphasis is on vibration and noise control, so it can sit next to other instruments without disturbing them.

At a glance

Cycle time	3 seconds
Loading time	3 seconds
Internal carriers	Two microplate carriers
Revolution control	Spin with velocity and ramp percentages, load and unload buckets, home

Specifications

Agilent publishes the following on the product page.

Acceleration / deceleration	Rapid, customisable, to minimise cycle time
Footprint	Compact; stackable to increase throughput without adding footprint
Vibration	Dampening isolates vibration from the mounting surface, minimising impact on adjacent instruments
Robot access	High-throughput door design; accessible by most laboratory microplate handlers and robots
Part numbers	G5582AA (Microplate Centrifuge), G5583AA (Automated Centrifuge Loader)

Agilent lists PCR purification, cell harvesting, and air bubble removal in high-density microplates as applications.

Agilent does not publish a maximum RCF or rotor speed on the product page. No g-force figure is stated here for that reason — see the note below on why that matters for methods.

Velocity is a percentage, not a g-force

Revolution’s spin operation takes velocity percent, acceleration percent and deceleration percent — not RCF and not rpm.

If your protocol specifies a spin in g, that conversion is not something the schedule can do for you: it depends on the instrument’s rotor and its own calibration. Establish the percentage that corresponds to your required force on your instrument, and record it with the method.

The Access loader

The Automated Centrifuge Loader (G5583AA) is a separate, optional part. Agilent describes it as facilitating microplate handoff and placement into one of the two internal carriers.

Without it, a robot reaches the carriers through the door directly. With it, the handoff is to the loader. Which arrangement you have changes what the robot has to be taught.

Supported methods

• Spin cycle — spin, given velocity percent, acceleration percent, deceleration percent and a time
• Load bucket — load a nominated bucket number, with a gripper offset, a plate height and a load speed
• Unload bucket — the same parameters, in reverse
• Present bucket 1 / Present bucket 2 — present either carrier for robot access
• Home — return the rotor to its home position

The load and unload operations take plate height and gripper offset per call, which is what lets one instrument handle labware of different heights without reconfiguration — but it also means those values have to be right for the labware, or the grip will be wrong.

Integration

Revolution talks to the VSpin over the network, addressing it by URL.

Prerequisites

• The instrument must be reachable from the Revolution host at the configured URL.
• A spin profile must be configured for the device.
• Plate height and gripper offset must match the labware the method presents.
• Bucket loads should be balanced as the instrument requires.

Device configuration

Property	Purpose
URL	Address of the instrument
Profile	Spin profile the device uses
Spin retry errors	Comma-separated list of errors that should trigger a retry rather than a failure

Spin retry errors is the setting worth knowing about. Some instrument errors are transient and worth retrying; others mean stop. Listing the former means a schedule survives a recoverable blip instead of failing the run — but list too much and a real fault gets retried instead of surfaced.

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