Instrument and method for sealing, desealing, and/or resealing of sample tubes

Abstract

The present invention relates to an instrument for automatically removing sealing covers from sample vessels (and/or for automatically sealing or resealing sample vessels with sealing covers, the instrument comprising a vessel holder for holding a sample vessel, and a suction/induction device comprising a suction member for holding a sealing cover, and an induction member comprising at least one induction coil, with the suction/induction device and the vessel holder being arranged in an axially movable manner with regard to each other, and, in use, the at least one induction coil is arranged above a bottom of the suction member. In addition, the present invention relates to a laboratory automation system comprising such instrument as well as a plurality of pre-analytical, analytical and/or post-analytical stations, and also relates to a method of automatically removing sealing covers from sample vessels and a method of automatically sealing or resealing sample vessels with sealing covers.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.