BiomedBuddy

Welcome to the STA Compact Operator Training Program.

This section of the training program is designed to give you a general look at the unit so you can become familiar with it before a more in-depth look within it.  We will be covering the electrical and mechanical layout of the unit. At the end of this introduction you should be able to identify the different sections of the unit, and what those sections, are used for.

The STA Compact is an automated laboratory piece of equipment designed to diagnose and monitor coagulation abnormalities.  The unit’s operating system is DOS, capable of performing clotting and chromogenic assays on plasma samples. Two measurement principles are used.

 Now let’s us move on to the right door, which allows you access to the cuvette wheel and the syringe. The syringe is used to pipette samples and reagent into the cuvettes on the measurement block.  Replacing the syringe tip is a key maintenance item to insure accuracy and good precision.

The cuvette wheel holds approx. 1000 cuvettes. The cuvettes are placed into a shuttle, by the cuvette loader. The shuttle then moves the cuvette to the measurement block.  In addition, this is where you find the 2 micro switches.  One tells the unit when a shuttle is in the loading station, and the other that a cuvette was loaded into the shuttle.

	The front Plexiglas cover lifts up allowing  access to
	the pipetting head (arm #1),and the inside of the unit.
	The unit will shut down unless a service disk is in the
	floppy drive or the door safety switch is bypassed.
	In the back right corner is the Temperature
	Regulation Board.

By opening the front cover you have access to:

• The three needles:  Needle #1 picks up sample, Q.C. , calibrators, desorb. and Owen Kollar Buffer only.  Needles #2 and #3 pick up reagents.
• Multi-Pipetting head board is being shown so that you are aware of the LLD wires and the LEDs which are common issues for LLD problems. Locate them and look at them in operation at a convenient time.

	Arm #2, is on the far right. You can see the Z motor
	here, which is the same motor, used for moving the
	needles up and down. (note:  cap piercing units
	have a larger motor because it is a cap piercing
	motor ).
	You can also see rubber boot, which is a expendable
	item. This is also a good view of the measurement
	block, which is divided into two sections. The back 16
	positions are the incubation wells. The front are 4
	measurement wells.All are kept at 37C.

Note: wells are counted from the back of the unit to the front. 1 thru 16 incubation well and 1 thru 4 measurement wells.

This is a good picture of the Chronometry Analog Board  for clotting tests and the AD Photometry Measurement Board for optical measurements.
 

Below the Plexiglas cover there are two drawers.  The one on the right is the product drawer and is used for reagents, QC, and CaCl.  The one on the left is used for samples and Owen Kollar Buffer. Both drawers contain a Sample and Reagent Display board and a Sample and Product detection board. They are easily removed by putting two fingers under the display board at the front of the unit and lifting up.  A common problem for one spot not to read is due to pieces of tube labels blocking the light path of detectors. Cleaning will resolve these issues.  There are 2 drawer motors  in the back which move the drawers in and out. 

In the back of the reagent drawer you can see the wash wells for the three needles. They should never overflow.  They should be able to hold solution.   Q.C. issue and the number one failure with the STA Compact is wash wells overflowing due to the failure of E.V. valve or a bebe in wash well.

	The right side of the unit is divided into
	compartments. For the most part each
	compartment supports different systems
	within the unit.

 Left section supports the fluidic system for the three needles. From the top down you have :

• Pipettor assembly which picks up reagents and samples for needles #1, #2 and#3
• To the right is a block of  EV valves which control which needle is being used.
• Valcor pump which pushes cleaning agent through the needles for washing.

• Note:  There should never be any air bubbles in the tubing going between these assemblies

In the bottom of this section is the cooling reservoir bottle which is used for the cooling and heating of the product drawer and the measurement block.  This can be filled almost to the top with glycol or water.  Water was used for many years and was switched to glycol to prevent the unit from freezing during shipments.

At the top center section you have:

• The optical module which supplies the light for chromogenic tests.
• To the right of that is the EV valves for arm #2 which moves the cuvettes from the shuttle to the wells.

At the bottom center you have the Cleaner Solution bottle and the Waste Bottle.

At the bottom far right you have the cleaning reservoir bottle.

At the far back the waste bottle reservoir.

In the back of unit is a filter and connectors for the  VGA monitor, Printer, keyboard and  LIS.

On the left side  of the instrument is the on/off switch and the main fuse.