Improve Liquid Handling with These Motion Techniques (Download)
Liquid-handling systems often use peristaltic pumps to perform critical operations. An important advantage of peristaltic pumps is that the transported liquid is isolated from the pumping mechanism, which reduces the chance of contamination. However, peristaltic pumps exhibit a pulsating flow behavior due to how the roller-wheels engage with the liquid tubing. Fortunately, these fluctuations are predictable allowing adaptive techniques to be deployed.
In this article, we examine these phenomena in more detail and demonstrate how high pumping accuracies are achievable with the use of an adaptive control method.