After long period of very slow developments, the last two days saw frenetic activity. I am away on a trip to Edinburgh (to attend the International Conference on Systems Biology), and so had to hear about the developments by remote control. All the images here were taken by Assaf, serving as my remote eyes.
Yesterday bright and early (before anyone showed up to work) the nice people from PVPlast came in and start installing the work-benches for the robotic room. The design was non-trivial, but they delivered it perfectly. By 2pm they finished and left.
Today, we had the electricity contractors come in to finish the electricity installation, as there is a non-trivial amount of electric/communication outlets that are mounted on the workbenches.
Few pictures of the work as it progressed today.
The table with the hole is going to hold the robotic-arm-on-a-rail. (The hole is for throwing out used plates.) The table next to it is the "heavy" table for the microscope. This table is not attached to any of the others to avoid vibrations. The bench next to wall is going to hold the microscope monitors and control boxes.
Here we see the tables where the liquid handling robot will sit and the FACS. The table that run in angle to them is the robotic arm table, and in the foreground we see the corner of the microscope table. The clean hood is sitting over the liquid handling table and the end of the robotic arm table, and will enclose this area with super-clean air. The long hole between the two tables will serve for cables. In the background you can see the workbench that will serve for sample preparation, and might also hold some of the equipment monitors. Here is another view of this bench and the clean hood.
Since there many devices will sit on these tables we needed to supply them with electricity and communications. Thus, there is an electricity panel below the robotic table (all along its length).
These cable come from connection boxes along the wall. Thus, there is another panel between the long arm table and the robotic table.
From there the cables go down below the microscope table and all the way to the wall. From the side this look like this.
At the other end of the microscope table the cables come from the rack into another panel. The important part of this construction is that the rack itself is "floating" below the microscope table without actually touching it (so not pass any vibrations).
On the wall the cables are distributed to the various connection boxes (each one housing cables fed from the main electricity and communication boards.
While they were here, the electricians also installed the benchtop lights that we have been waiting for for a long time. Let there be light!
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