ongoing Tecan Fluent disaster / problems

This post describes a work in progress, which is ongoing for over 1 year now. We are an academic lab working in experimental high-throughput network analysis and purchased one of the largest versions of the supposedly cutting edge Tecan liquid handling technology - A fluent with LiHa (individual tip pipetting, MCA (96 well pipetting), Gripper (plate exchange) and slots for >100 plates for HT hitpicking). I have been an intense user of Tecan liquid handling solutions for over 15 years and in the past I found the instuments as well as the service most reliable and easy to use.

The first disappointment was that the Fluent software is much more challenging to use than the Evo control software.Programming is more challenging and much less intuitive. So, do not be tricked in supposedly bying into a company with familier interfaces - it is all new and feels like switching to a completely different vendor.

Our new Fluent has been delivered late 2017 and one of the primary applications was hitpicking using the gripper (RGA) and LiHa tips. However, from the beginning the instument was plagued with malfunctions, some of which are sensors etc., which could be easyly replaced and fixed, whereas some were fundamental and required several months of software fixes. It is unclear what is going on in the background however fact is that to this day we have not been able to do use the instument in the promised way for more than a week in a row.

In the context of these difficulties, the handling of the problems by the company was most disappointing. Often it was difficult to get a reply and none of the attempts put the robot into a fully functional state.

End of march 2019 we are still waiting for a solution ...