Flow Cytometer

Flow Cytometer
Model	Coulter EPICS ALTRA
Sub-category	Biohacking
Status	Faulty
Consumables	Sheath Solution, Cleaning fluid, sample tubes
Accessories	Unknown
Training requirement	Yes
Training link	Unknown
Owner	LHS/biohackers
Origin	Donated by Imperial College London
Location	In storage
Maintainers	tolland

Imperial College donated a Flow Cytometer. It was donated as working, but in need of repair. However there is a lot of damage due to corrosion, which might be impossible to fix for a reasonable amount of time and money.

The unit is too large to be stored in the biolab (1.8m X 0.8m = 1.44 square meters of floor space) and was previously moved to storage while we worked on it.

Status: It's sustained damage to the sampling area, and we are missing some bits. Repairing is likely to be very $$$, so we are planning to dismantle it and use the optics and lasers on other projects.

There are a number of large external units some of which are for providing power and cooling to the large laser.

There is a good description of how a flow cytometer works here; http://media.invitrogen.com.edgesuite.net/tutorials/4Intro_Flow/player.html

The machine requires a dust free environment due to it's use of lasers and optics.

I am currently looking to obtain a copy of the service manual.