Formulator®

Formulator®

Screen Builder for Protein Crystallography

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Save Money + Reduce Waste

No Consumables Needed

No additional consumables
are required to run or maintain
the system.

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Maintain Ingredient Integrity

Only Closed Containers

Closed containers prevent contamination, evaporation, and the release of fumes.

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Build Complex Screens

Use Up To 34 Ingredients

Use up to 34 ingredients to create custom screens to fit your experiment needs.

"My supervisor is already impressed that our analysts have hit the ground running with the Rock Imager and have been generating data much faster. Our group workload is increasing and we would like to complement our Rock Imager and Formulator with the NT8 so move our crystallization projects along even faster, and also become a showcase lab for you…we’ve also doubled our throughput in a few short months thanks to Formulatrix!"

althea
William Wittbold
Director of Technical Operations

Dispense Viscous and Non-Viscous Ingredients

At the core of the Formulator is a patented microfluidic chip that measures and dispenses discrete volumes of liquid. The chip has 96 outputs, each with its own microfluidic valve cluster. Each valve cluster has two micro-diaphragms (200 nL and 2.5 µL) that fill and dispense up to three times per second. By combining multiple dispenses of each micro-diaphragm, the Formulator can dispense any volume down to 200 nL.

"We buy a lot of products for Formulatrix such as Rock Imager (both 4c system and RT system), Formulator and NT8 for protein crystallization when using this machine we do face some problems and once I even want to return them back but people from Formulatrix always try their best to solve the problems. Finally, I think Formulatrix is really a responsible company and they always try their best to serve the customers. More important, the products are easy using."

Weifei Chen
Associate Professor

Easily Create Screens with Up to 34 Ingredients

Models to Fit Your Budget and Workflow
The Formulator comes in 3 different models based on the number of ingredients you need to create your crystallization screens. The systems support both 125 mL and 250 mL Nalgene bottles, as well as, 50 mL conical tubes. All of the models have the same physical size and offer an optional secondary wash input for other wash solutions.

Easy Ingredient Switching
Adding ingredients is as easy as scanning the reagent barcode and inserting the bottle (with a specialized check-valve cap) into any open input on the top of the Formulator. Bottle sensors tell the system where you positioned each reagent automatically, eliminating user error.

Formulator 34

"The Formulatrix robotics in our lab facilitates incredible speed and versatility in our operation. The modularity of the platform enabled us to start with a Rock Imager and to scale up as our needs grew. We now have the full suite of PC products (Rock Maker, Formulator, NT8, and Rock Imagers 54 and 360), and it has been instrumental in scaling our throughput to match the needs of our growing organization."

Isaac Hoffman
Director of Structural Biology

User-Friendly Software

The Formulator software provides a straightforward, user-friendly way to run even the most complicated dispensing protocols through a visual representation of your plate that displays each ingredient’s dispense volume and well location.

 

Design dispenses that vary the volume of each reagent to every well on the plate, dispense the same volume to every well, and add a backfill if necessary.

Rock Maker Integration

Quickly design experiments using the Rock Maker Crystallization Software.  Rock Maker can provide a barcode to print and label your plate with. To run the dispense list, simply scan the plate label using the integrated barcode scanner before placing the plate on the Formulator's plate holder. The dispense design will automatically load and you're ready to run the dispense.

Simply Design, Barcode, Scan, and Run

Play Video

Gradient Layer Optimization Screen

Play Video

Random Layer Dispensing

Testimonials

Publications

Citations: 23 Product: Formulator®
Mpontshane et al., 2025 |Preprint |Link
Candida albicans is a critical priority fungal pathogen causing invasive fungal infections with high mortality rates in immunocompromised patients The increasing fungal infection rate and resistance of fungal pathogens to existing antifungal treatments have emphasized the need for the development of novel antifungal medicine The ergosterol biosynthesis pathway has been ...More |Related Solutions: Formulator®
Wang et al., 2024 |Journal of Cell Science |Link
Talin herein referring collectively to talin and couples the actomyosin cytoskeleton to integrins and transmits tension to the extracellular matrix Talin also interacts with numerous additional proteins capable of modulating the actin-integrin linkage and thus downstream mechanosignaling cascades Here we demonstrate that the scaffold protein Caskin interacts directly with the ...More |Related Solutions: Formulator®
Budziszewski et al., 2024 |Biochemistry |Link
X-ray crystallography is the most commonly employed technique to discern macromolecular structures but the crucial step of crystallizing a protein into an ordered lattice amenable to diffraction remains challenging The crystallization of biomolecules is largely experimentally defined and this process can be labor-intensive and prohibitive to researchers at resource-limited institutions ...More |Related Solutions: Formulator®
Vasina et al., 2023 |Biotechnology Advances |Link
Nowadays the vastly increasing demand for novel biotechnological products is supported by the continuous development of biocatalytic applications that provide sustainable green alternatives to chemical processes The success of a biocatalytic application is critically dependent on how quickly we can identify and characterize enzyme variants fitting the conditions of industrial ...More |Related Solutions: Formulator®
Lynch et al., 2023 |Acta crystallographica |Link
Diffraction-based structural methods contribute a large fraction of the biomolecular structural models available providing a critical understanding of macromolecular architecture These methods require crystallization of the target molecule which remains a primary bottleneck in crystal-based structure determination The National High-Throughput Crystallization Center at Hauptman Woodward Medical Research Institute has focused ...More |Related Solutions: Formulator®

Resources