November 27, 2018 — Festo, a manufacturer of pneumatic and electromechanical systems, recently dedicated the company’s Technology Engineering Center (TEC), located just north of Boston. The TEC is the company’s first engineering center in the United States devoted to the life sciences.
The choice of the United States for this engineering center was based on this country’s leadership in the global life sciences industry. Locating the researchers and developers in greater Boston was due to the proximity of the area’s research institutions such as MIT, Harvard, and Brown, the confluence of laboratory equipment manufacturers, and the pool of qualified technologists.
The goal of TEC Boston is two-fold:
- Pioneer the development of fluid handling products based on pneumatic principles
- Work with individual customers on automated motion and fluid handling solutions that help bring their laboratory equipment to market.
The Festo team is developing a new approach to fluid dispensing that is based on fast acting valves and pneumatic pressure in addition to using micro-pumping technology.
The initial target for the new Festo products has been the development of pneumatic systems to fill 384 well plates within 15 seconds, handling fluid volumes between 500 nanoliters to five microliters. Current systems achieve a coefficient of variation (C V ), also known as relative standard deviation (RSD), of less than two percent in a variety of applications.
