Cracked Slide?

[vrxl710]

Hi all,

I have run into a very serious problem with SOLiD slides. They just keep cracking....

At the beginning it cracked only when it was on the flow cell and it was the same flow cell. We thought it might be the carrier but we used the same carrier on different flow cell and it was fine. Now I was told that it might be the flow cell itself and the engineer gonna come and fix it. So the problem should be solved, right? Then today I tried to load another slide and it cracked during the 37 incubation. Have you guys ever had this kind of problem before? It is def the worst nightmare. Just imagine at the very last step, all the work you have done before were gone!!!!

Could anyone here help me with that? at least some opinion, please!

Many thanks!

[NextGenSeq]

This happened to us once. It turned out there was a screw not completely flush with the flow cell. I would ask your service engineer to check it out.

[pmiguel]

Hi vrxl710,
Cracked slides are a big problem for us as well. We haven't had one crack prior to loading it in the flow cell, though.
Anyway, I think it is a design flaw; an obvious one. Applied Biosystem's flow cell design is such that it places a glass slide in direct contact with metal (the slide carrier). If you have anything between the metal and the glass it creates a potential shear point. Glass is brittle, so it can crack at that point. Worse, the slide carrier itself might not be perfectly smooth. If so, it may be a "slide cracker". I do not imagine that the temperature changes in the flow cell help matters. I think it is a miracle it works as well as it does.
We certainly had slides crack with v3 and v3.5 as well. So I don't think this is v4-specific. Although it is possible something has changed for the worse.

--
Phillip

[Brugger]

As far as I know two versions of the slide adapters exists. One have a vertical (or horizontal, cannot recall) bar at the middle like a 8 and the other one dont, like a 0. The former design have an issue with building up tension and breaking the slides. So if you have one of the former designs that is most likely the culprit.

If needed I can recheck the detains with my colleagues.