An introduction to the STA Compact, manufactured by Diagnostica Stago. This intro will help you identify sections of the unit and provide an overview of their use. Video is approximately 8 minutes long.

Transcription of A Video Introduction to the STA Compact

Welcome to the STA Compact 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, in general, 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 and capable of performing clotting and chromogenic assays of plasma samples. Two measurement principles are used to make this measurement.

Let’s look at the front of the unit. The left door gives you access to the floppy drive, circuit boards, and the power supply LEDs. The LEDs show you that the unit power supply and fuses are okay and in working order. If the unit is on, all LEDs should be on. The floppy drive is used for backing up your files, software updates, and allows use of the service disk which gives you access to the service options.

Now let’s move on to the right door, which allows you access to the cuvette wheel and the syringe. The syringe is used to pipette sample and reagents into the cuvettes on the measurement block. Replacing the syringe chip is a key maintenance item to ensure accuracy and good precision. The cuvette wheel holds approximately a thousand 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 two micro-switches. One micro-switch tells the unit when a shuttle is in the loading station, and the other micro-switch that a cuvette was loaded into the shuttle.

The front plexi-glass cover lifts up allowing you access to the pipetting head, arm one, and the inside of the unit. The unit will shut down unless the service disk is in the floppy drive or the door safety switch is bypassed. By opening the front cover you have access to the three needles: Needle One picks up sample, quality control, calibrators, desorb and Owren-Koller Buffer only. Needles Two and Three pick up reagents. The multi-pipetting board is also being shown so that you are aware of the liquid level detect wires and the LEDs which are common issues for liquid level detect problems. I recommend you locate them and look at them while in operation at a convenient time
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In the back, right corner is a temperature regulation board. Also, Arm Two is at the far right. You can see the Z motor here. This Z Motor is the same motor that’s used for moving the needles up and down. Note: CAT-piercing units have a different, larger motor because it is a CAT-Piercing Motor. You can also see the rubber boot, which is an expendable item. This is also a good view of the measurement block which is divided into two sections. The front sixteen sections are incubation wells which are kept at 37 degrees C. There are four measurement wells and note that the wells are counted from the back of the unit to the front. One through sixteen are incubation wells, one through four are measurement wells. This also a good picture of a chronometry analog board for clotting tests and the A/D photometric measurement board for optical measurements. The front of the measurement block fits the waste containers for the cuvettes. The cuvettes are disposed of here after the measurement cycle. The cuvette waste drawer rides in and out on a steel guide rail.

Below the plexiglass cover there are two drawers. The one on the right is the product drawer and is used for reagents, quality control, and calcium chloride. The one on the left is used for samples and Owren-Koller Buffer. Both drawers contain a sample and a reagent display board, and a sample and product catching board. They are easily removed by putting two fingers under the display board at the front of the unit and lifting up. The most common problem for one spot not to be read is pieces of label blocking the light path of the detectors. Cleaning will resolve those issues. There are two 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. Quality control issue and the number one failure for many years with the STA Compact is wash wells overflowing due to the failure of the EV valve, or BVs in a wash well.

The right side of the unit is divided into compartments. For the most part, each compartment supports different systems within the unit. The left section supports the fluidic system for the three needles. From the top down, you have a Pipettor Assembly, which picks ups the samples and reagents for needles number one, two, and three. A little to the right is the block of the three EV valves which control which needle is being used. Below that, you’ve got a valcor pump which pushes cleaning agent through the needles for washing and note: there should never be any air bubbles in the tubing between those assemblies. At the bottom of this section is the cooling reservoir bottle which is used for 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 unit from freezing during shipments. At the top, center section you have the optical module which supplies light for the chromogenic tests. To the right of that, you have the EV valves for arm number two which moves the cuvettes from the shuttle to the wells. Below that at the bottom center, you have the cleaning solution bottle and the waste bottle. Now to the far right, at the bottom far right you have the cleaning reservoir bottle which gets its cleaning solution from the large cleaning reservoir, which we mentioned earlier. Right beside the cleaning reservoir bottle is the waste reservoir bottle which is the far back of the instrument. The cleaning solution bottle should have cleaning solution in it. The waste bottle will have different degrees of waste. Now on to the back of the unit. . .

You have the filters, on the top right you have the connectors for the VGA monitor, the printer, the LIS. On to the left side, here you’re going to see the fuses on the bottom front and on the left side you’re going to see the power-on switch and the two main fuses. This is also where the Serial Number for the instrument is located. This concludes the introduction to the operator training section. Thank you very much for your time.