Robotics

Buying guide

What settles a laboratory robotics purchase before anything else is throughput: how many samples the system has to process in a run, and how fast. A deck that holds eight tips and two plates suits a protocol of a few dozen reactions; a high-density platform running 384 or 1536 wells with on-deck incubation and plate stacking is a different machine entirely, and the price gap between them is most of the spread you see in this catalogue. Decide the daily volume first, because it fixes the deck size, the number of positions, and whether an integrated arm to shuttle plates between stations is worth paying for. A buyer who sizes the robot to the actual workload, rather than to the busiest week imagined, avoids both the under-capacity that forces manual top-up and the over-capacity that sits idle.

Once the format is settled, the question on a used unit is what it was built around. Liquid handlers are configured for a specific tip type, a specific plate geometry and often a specific assay, and a deck set up for one laboratory's workflow may need reconfiguration for another. Verify that the tips and labware the seller's deck expects are still available and affordable, that the software licence transfers or can be relicensed, and that the pipetting channels have been checked for volume accuracy. These systems depend on calibration far more than most benchtop equipment: a channel that dispenses a few percent off ruins an assay silently. Ask what the unit last ran and whether its dispensing was verified before listing. Parts for older platforms can be sourced via Questpair.

The price band here is unusually wide because the category spans single arms, pipetting modules and whole workcells. Most of what a buyer looks at falls well below the top of the range, and the average listing sits far closer to the floor than the ceiling, so budget against the configuration you actually need rather than the headline maximum. Refurbished and used automation is listed for sale at prices below new, which is where the value sits for a laboratory that wants capacity without a capital-project timeline. The brands that occupy this catalogue, Beckman Coulter, Thermo Scientific, Epson, FANUC, Thermo Fisher Scientific among them, cover both the dedicated liquid-handling houses and the industrial-arm makers, so the cost of a given model is easy to compare across several suppliers before you commit.

Types of Robotics

Which robotic systems are listed here?

Among the listings that specify a type, the catalogue is dominated by liquid handling. Automated liquid handling systems and automated pipetting systems do the same core job, moving measured volumes between wells, reservoirs and tubes, and the two names mostly reflect how different makers label the same class. A liquid handling robot is the self-contained unit that performs this on a fixed deck, while a laboratory automation system is the broader assembly that links such a unit to incubators, readers and plate stores under one scheduler. A laboratory automation robot usually means the articulated arm that passes plates between those stations. The one distinction worth holding onto as a buyer is scale: a pipetting system is a single instrument, an automation system is an integrated line, and the second costs and commits far more than the first.

This equipment is the workhorse of several life-sciences fields. Automated liquid handling is the backbone of high-throughput screening and of the sample-preparation stages ahead of genomics and proteomics, where a run may need thousands of identical pipetting steps that no hand can do reproducibly. Pipetting systems are also used for nucleic acid extraction and PCR setup in molecular diagnostics, for plating and dilution in microbiology, and for the reagent transfers behind an immunoassay. In cell culture and cell imaging work they handle media changes and plate seeding at a consistency manual pipetting cannot match, and in protein purification they automate the repetitive loading and elution steps. These are the research applications a buyer is usually sizing the robot against, and they are what makes throughput, rather than any single specification, the deciding factor.

The brands behind the robotics listings

The makers that recur in this catalogue, Beckman Coulter, Thermo Scientific, Epson, FANUC, Thermo Fisher Scientific among them, fall into two camps. The dedicated liquid-handling and instrument houses supply purpose-built pipetting decks with their own labware and software, which makes parts and consumables easier to find and models straightforward to compare against one another. The industrial-arm makers bring general-purpose robots adapted to the laboratory, which widens what the deck can reach but ties support to a different parts ecosystem. For a buyer, a brand that appears often across several of the verified suppliers and distributors here means more than one unit to weigh, and a better chance of finding the exact configuration without waiting for it. Compatibility of tips, plates and software follows the maker, so it is worth settling on one or two names early and comparing within them.

What a used robotics system costs here

Condition is the clearest fact in this catalogue: 99 percent of the listings are used. Prices run from EUR 86 to EUR 103.307. That spread is not a measure of quality but of what counts as a listing, from a single accessory at the floor to a complete integrated workcell at the ceiling, with the typical unit sitting much nearer the lower end than the average alone suggests. Used and refurbished automation is listed below new pricing, which for this class of equipment is where most of the available capacity actually is. Where a buyer wants a warranty on a specific unit, that is arranged in consultation for the listing in question.