COMPACT JAM-RESISTANT CAPILLARY DISPENSER FOR AUTOMATION SYSTEMS

A compact capillary dispenser has been designed that reliably stores f ragile glass capillaries in a known orientation and positively inserts one on demand into a robotic gripper head. A unique feature of the de sign keeps the capillaries from jamming. A successful prototype was bu ilt that stores 3800, 5 mu L glass capillaries (55 mm length, 838 mu m outside diameter) in an 8 cm cube, excluding the space required for t wo small pneumatic cylinders. The fundamental design of this dispenser can be scaled to dispense virtually any size round cylindrical object s. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.