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Comprehensive preanalytics solution for flow cytometry

The Cell Forge™ benchtop instrument, open, showing its deck, tube racks and touchscreen

Cell Forge™ is a compact, one-stop solution that automates the most labor-intensive steps of flow cytometry sample preparation — delivering reproducible results, minimizing reagent waste, and freeing your time for breakthrough discoveries.

  1. Panel design
  2. Panel mixing
  3. Cell staining
  4. Cell washing
  5. Ready for acquisition

Why researchers choose Cell Forge™

The labor-intensive steps, consolidated

Cell Forge™ folds the most error-prone parts of the workflow into one compact, intelligent platform — with panels designed, mixed and tracked in StainWorks.

Purpose-built for flow cytometry

Panel mixing: antibodies drawn from the P54 storage module into 2 mL microtubes and onward to the destination plate, with capacitive liquid sensing

Pushbutton Panel Mixing

  • Build large antibody panels and cocktails while managing and storing your reagent inventory
  • Up to 96 distinct sub-panels per run — master mixes, single stains and FMOs
  • Eliminates the need for individual tube handling, uncapping and recapping
  • Precision tracking of remaining reagent levels
1 µL
minimum mixing volume at 5% CV
5 µL
minimum dead volume from a standard 0.5 mL antibody vial
Panel mixing white paper
The StainWorks panel editor: a named multicolor panel with CD8:FITC, CD45:PE, CD20:APC and CD4:PacBlu rows, each with a volume

Panel Design in StainWorks

  • Define the panel marker by marker, each with its own fluorophore and volume
  • Add FMOs and single stains alongside the master mix
  • Up to 96 distinct sub-panels in a single mixing run
  • Reuse saved antibody modules across panels instead of retyping them
Explore StainWorks
A gloved hand editing a pipetting step on the instrument's touchscreen protocol editor

Touchscreen UI and Protocol Editing

  • Effortlessly create and customize protocols
  • 21 CFR Part 11 compliance with user account log in and run logs
  • Infinite program flexibility
Black conductive CO-RE tips pipetting into a 96-well plate beside a tip rack

State-of-the-Art Liquid Handling and Detection Monitoring

  • Capacitive liquid level detection powered by Hamilton technology with black conductive CO-RE tips
  • Warns you when reagents are missing or volumes are insufficient for assay completion
  • 5 µL minimum dead volume from a standard 0.5 mL antibody vial

The platform

What's inside

Cell washing

Celltrifuge™

Celltrifuge™ is a one-of-a-kind single-plate centrifuge module that spins 96 samples at up to 3000 RPM (600 g), making cell washing efficient enough to sit inside an automated run.

  • An integrated stepper motor driver delivers instant torque and complete control over start-stop position
  • Specially designed Flare-Plates™ conform to the rotor shape while spinning, then bounce back flat for washing
  • Washing is carried out by the Cell Forge™ 8-channel pipetting arm with disposable tips
  • CO-RE II liquid sensing aspirates precisely from the liquid surface, without disturbing the pellets

Patent pending.

The Celltrifuge™ rotor inside Cell Forge™, holding a 96-well plate curved to follow the rotor's arc
Engineering cross-section through the Celltrifuge™ rotor: sample tubes splayed along the rotor's curve with the Flare-Plate bent to follow the arc, annotated with arrows showing g-force pointing into each tube and the direction of rotation
Cross-section through the rotor: the Flare-Plate™ (pink) bends to follow the rotor's arc while spinning, holding every tube square to the g-force.

Validation

Tested against manual preparation

Flow cytometry gating strategy for automated versus manual panel mixing of one human PBMC sample, above a bar chart of the manual-to-automated ratio across 27 gated populations, every ratio sitting close to 1
Automated panel mixing compared against manual preparation on one representative human PBMC sample, across 27 gated populations. The data was generated on the Parhelia Spatial Station™, which carries the same panel mixing capability as Cell Forge™. Flow and Immune Analysis Shared Resource Laboratory, Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center

What that changes at the bench

Tech specs

Cell Forge™ specifications
Footprint 2 x 2 ft (62 x 60 cm)
Sample throughput Up to 96 samples per run
Sub-panels per run Up to 96 (master mixes, single stains, FMOs)
Minimum mixing volume 1 µL at 5% CV
Minimum dead volume 5 µL (from a standard 0.5 mL antibody vial)
Liquid handling Hamilton, capacitive liquid level detection
Cell washing Integrated centrifugation
Compliance IVD / CLIA ready — ISO 13485, 21 CFR Part 11, IQ/OQ/PQ, GLP

See Cell Forge™ on your own samples

Tell us about your panels and throughput, and we will show you what the workflow looks like end to end.