Cluster Station Flow Problems

[SeaJane]

We are having a terrible time with our newest lot of flow cells (42xxxAAXX). I am wondering if anyone else has had similar problems, and, hopefully, advice. I went from fairly reliably walking away from amp on the cluster station to having to watch the first cycles like a hawk and switching out 2-4 amp manifolds before one will pull evenly through. This is not a problem with the hyb manifolds and only seems to have started once we received the 42-series of flow cells. It is likely not a problem with our cluster stations as a manifold that fails on one cluster station fails on at least 2 of the 3 stations (two of the cluster stations have had practically everything replaced from the peltier heater, to the clips, to the pumps). I've tested new and old lots of manifolds and the problems seems to be irrespective of lot. The only thing that is new is the flow cells themselves. Has anyone had a good/bad experience with this lot of flow cells?

Thanks!

[SGPSling]

Hi, SeaJane:

We got the same "42XXXAAXX" lot of FCs. We didn't experience the problem you described. Since all the manifolds were handmade, is that possilbe that you were just running into bad luck to have bad amplification manifold?

We did have problem of very low cluster numbers with this lot of FCs. Just verified it wasn't the cluster station's problem this week. Just ordered a new cluster generation kit to verify if it's the problem with the reagent. Have you had such problem with your FC? Thanks a lot!

Cheers!

[huguesparri]

Hi,
I experienced the same problem twice:
- I've loaded a Flow Cell with 3 pM samples and I had less clusters in my run than usual.
- I've tried another Flow Cell loaded with 5 pM samples and a 2pM PhiX: the amount of PhiX clusters was extremely low (like less than 500.000) and was surprisingly low for the samples (like 2.500.000 to 8.500.000 per sample) considering my starting concentration.

Both Flow Cell's serial number were: 427XXAAXX

I'll try another Flow Cell lot next week.
We'll see...

H.