Probe Cassette Pocket Structure for Accurate Automated Pickup
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing probe storage solutions, such as gel boxes, provide probes with high positional and rotational freedom, making automated pickup challenging and costly, and they occupy significant space.
Innovation Solution
A probe cassette with a main body and affixable physical confinement elements, such as sheets with apertures, restricts probe movement by defining pockets with engagement faces along the perimeter, allowing precise and automated probe handling.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If gel boxes are used to store probes, then probes have high positional and rotational freedom, but automated pickup becomes challenging and probes are prone to damage
Solution Approach 1:
The storage box is divided into multiple individual compartments, each dedicated to holding a single probe. This segmentation isolates each probe from others and from potential sources of damage, while the compartments are designed with specific geometric constraints that guide automated pickup mechanisms. Each compartment can be independently accessed by automated systems without disturbing other probes.
Solution Approach 2:
The compartment structure serves as an intermediary between the automated pickup system and the probe. The compartments provide a controlled interface with standardized opening mechanisms and positioning features that facilitate reliable automated interaction, while protecting the probe from direct exposure to handling forces and environmental contaminants.
2Manufacturing precision
If probes are held with restricted spread in relative position and orientation, then control over storage position improves for automated exchange, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
Each compartment is designed with locally optimized geometric features tailored to the specific dimensions and requirements of the probes it holds. The compartment walls, bottom surfaces, and opening configurations are locally customized to provide appropriate constraints on probe position and orientation while maintaining ease of automated access. This localized customization achieves precise positioning control without requiring complex overall system architecture.
Solution Approach 2:
Instead of designing complex active constraint mechanisms to control probe position, the invention inverts the approach by using simple passive geometric confinement. The compartments are shaped and positioned so that the probes naturally settle into correct orientations and positions due to gravity and geometric fit, eliminating the need for active control systems while achieving precise positioning.
Data Source
AI summary
Aspects of the present disclosure pertain to a probe cassette for holding a probe, e.g. an atomic force microscopy, at a predefined holding position for automated pickup. The probe cassette comprises a main body 3 including a support face 1 for supporting the probe; and one or more physical confinement elements 50 formed or affixed along said support face, said one or more physical confinement elements providing a plurality of engagement faces disposed along a perimeter of the predefined holding position, said engagement faces extending in a direction out of the support face, so as to define a pocket 9 for holding the probe, wherein the pocket is dimensioned to restrict a lateral shift of the probe in any direction along the support face.