Specimen handling appts. e.g. for chemical or biochemical analysis - has specimen vessel transport system and synchronised tool manipulation arrangement enabling parallel processing

摘要

A specimen handling apparatus has an arrangement which feeds specimen vessel (3) holders (15) stepwise along a horizontal path. Each step corresponds to the mean vessel separation. The specimens are processed by automatically operated and controlled tools (9) whilst stationary at defined positions. A tool manipulation arrangement contains a common, vertically displaceable tool carrier on which the tools can be optionally mounted to correspond to the dwell positions. All tools can be operated simultaneously to process the correspondingly positioned specimens and each tool processes a sequence of specimens by synchronising tool operation with specimen transport. USE/ADVANTAGE - Enables increased processing capacity to be achieved at reduced cost by using parallel processing.