Apricot Technology

Apricot Designs manufactures affordable, compact and easy-to-use multichannel pipetting systems. Apricot was the first in the industry to offer 96/384 channel pipetting combined with the ability to do serial dilutions on the same platform.

New users are often confused about the use of 96-channel pipettors and 384-channel pipettors with 96-well and 384-well microplates. Both the 96-channel and the 384-channel pipettors can be used with 96-well or 384-well microplate applications by installing the appropriate head. Because of Apricot's unique interchangeable head design that separates the pipetting mechanism from the pipetting tips, the user can easily install a head that is suited to the required task at hand. The head design also allows the cost of the heads to be very reasonable so that it is feasible to maintain a library of heads that can be used for different tasks. This means that a 96 or 384 channel pipettor can easily be adapted in the future for different uses with minimal additional investment.

384-channel pipettor models are designed with 384 individual pipetting syringes compared to 96 individual syringes in a 96-channel pipettor model. The 384-channel model can pipette to and from a 384-well plate up to four times faster than the 96-channel model, which must access the 384-well plate four times. Because of the additional syringe mechanisms, the 384-channel pipettors models are priced higher than 96-channel models. The ideal model for any specific situation is dependent on the need for high throughput balanced against budgetary considerations.

All Apricot pipettors can be used for a variety of liquid handling tasks including reagent & solvent addition, plate replication, plate reformatting, and serial dilutions by rows or columns. If you are new to liquid handling and don't understand these terms, please visit our basic liquid handling concepts web page.

The following links describe how various combinations of Apricot multichannel pipettors and heads can be used to perform these different tasks on 96-well and 384-well microplates.

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96 channel pipettor accesses a 96-well plate

96 channel pipettor accesses a 384-well plate

96 channel pipettor performs serial dilution by columns

96 channel pipettor performs serial dilution by rows

384 channel pipettor accesses a 384-well plate

384 channel pipettor accesses a 96-well plate

384 channel pipettor performs serial dilution by columns (384)

384 channel pipettor performs serial dilution by rows (384)

384 channel pipettor performs serial dilution by columns (96)

384 channel pipettor performs serial dilution by rows (96)