Company News & Latest Developments in Scientific Software and Laboratory Science

In May 2010 Aitken Scientific provided Torqueleader - a major manufacturer of torque wrenches with a new internal calibration system.
Benefits of the new system:
Automatically links the production data base to the calibration database making huge savings in time and money.
Now recognises and connects to a variety of electronic torque measuring instruments and so the company has a choice of supplier allowing them to select the best value option.

Aitken Scientific became an associate to a highly regarded supplier of laboratory equipment. Aitken Scientific have been supporting and extending the functionality of a heating and stirring control system for their product. Aitken Scientifics’ skills and expertise have given the client the freedom to enhance their products.

A dedicated business system to support a company's calibration lab has been ordered. This will streamline the complete order processing, calibration support and certificate printing processes for this customer, enabling them to spend more time on the important aspects of the business.

A major cancer research hospital wanted to automate the production of a new radiopharmaceutical drug using Amercare’s automated dose dispenser. Aitken Scientific were commissioned to provide the programming expertise to allow users to define a method, save it to non-volatile memory, and run it when required. The dispenser uses a Baldor control board which is programmed in Mint, a language similar to Basic. We added new menus, a complete method editor with aspirate, dispense, elute to column, wash and call protocol elements, using the existing 4 by 20 character display and the limited keypad.

The hospital users are delighted as the system is easy to use and exceeds their expectations.

Aitken Scientific have just completed upgrading a number of CheckWeigher machines for a major pharmaceutical company. The machines, designed and built by Aitken Scientific, have been modified to incorporate a new peeling mechanism designed to further improve the efficiency and reliability of the system.

The CheckWeigher machines weigh powder from Dry Powder Inhaler foil strip which is the product of the main manufacturing process. During this process, small pockets are pressed into the foil strip. These strips are then filled with the powder and sealed. The machines check that the variation in the weight of powder in each pocket remains within a defined limit.

The new peeling mechanism peels the backing foil away from the strip exposing the powder. The powder is then extracted from the pocket using a vacuum pump. The strip is weighed before and after each extraction to calculate the weight of the powder which was present in the pocket. This novel design has reduced the processing time of a strip by over 30%.

Combined with full GAMP standard design documents, the new machine has provided the customer with a high quality solution that will give them the QA information they need for their production line.

The Midlands Region of the Environment Agency are now deploying a portable hydrometric data collection system developed by Aitken Scientific. The system, initially being used in a single-area trial, was developed for ruggedised PDAs to allow data collection by field agents in potentially wet or equipment-hazardous conditions.

A full system was developed by Aitken Scientific, including the data collection application for Windows Mobile PDAs and a back-end data store. The new system works with PDAs already owned by the Environment Agency, increasing the value of earlier hardware investment.

The new system replaces a pen-and-paper method of collecting data, allowing field agents to collect data in all weathers and return it to base the same day. The improved return time and reduced handling requirements of the data allows the Environment Agency to log, track and respond to data faster and with more certainty.

Aitken Scientific have just completed a new software package, X-Sampler, for ThalesNano to enable users of their state of the art X-Cube™ to conduct automated continuous-flow chemistry reactions. The collaboration was initiated based on the high demand from the ThalesNano customer base for an automated flow reactor platform.

The ThalesNano X-Cube™ is a flow reactor which allows continuous-flow organic reactions to be performed at temperatures and pressures of up to 200°C (392°F) and 150 bar (2176 psi) respectively using a catalyst/reagent cartridge system (CatCart®). The X-Cube Autosampler™ combines the X-Cube™ with an industry standard Gilson GX-271 autosampler to allow the automated injection of samples.

The software is based on the highly successful H-Sampler software which Aitken Scientific developed for the revolutionary ThalesNano H-Cube Autosampler™ system.

X-Sampler uses a user-friendly wizard-based experiment design tool for library production and process optimization. It supports full customization of rack and bed layouts and provides full control of the liquid handler and the X-Cube™.

For more information about the X-Cube Autosampler™ system, contact Thales Nano.

Aitken Scientific have recently completed a major upgrade to a sample tracking application we had originally supplied to AstraZeneca in 2004.

AstraZeneca, like most companies, change systems and procedures over time. Some of their recent changes impacted a sample tracking application we had developed for them few years ago: corporate sample identification, sample submission and sample results systems had changed. In addition to this the preferred version of Oracle server increased from 9i to 10g.

The original application had a very specific set of requirements, which enabled the AstraZeneca team to successfully complete their project but wished to continue using the application for other less structured short term requirements.

What we achieved for Astra Zeneca:

Aitken Scientific made the essential corporate changes but more significantly re-worked the application to allow the team to be much more flexible with how they process the samples. The project was upgraded from Visual Studio 2003 C#1 .NET 1.1 to Visual Studio 2008 C#3+.NET 2.0 (we still had to support Windows 2000 so .NET 3.5 could not be used). With the latest software development tools: C#3, lambda expressions and LINQ to Objects the code became significantly easier to understand.