A method for the evaluation of automated solid dosing technologies for mid-scale dosing tasks in laboratory automation

Solid dosing is a tedious and time-consuming task in everyday laboratory work. Manual solid dosing can cause several health issues due to handling of toxic materials or posture errors. Automated solid dosing technologies intend to overcome these issues and increase efficiency. However, these technologies are predominantly developed for miniaturized high-throughput use cases and dosing in the milligram-range. Although solid dosing in the lower gram-range is frequently performed in biotechnological laboratories, there is a lack of evaluated automated dosing technologies in this range. The aim of this study is to investigate the requirements for automated solid dosing in biotechnological laboratories and to introduce a method for the evaluation of existing of-the-shelf dosing technologies. Based on that, one system, the Mettler Toledo XPR Automatic Balance, is tested for application in biotechnological laboratories according to these requirements.