I had used the ACT-24 for more than 20 years, from early 90's till 2009. Now as a retiree I use it in a first (lowest) level blood group laboratory. For the first 10 years we worked with it in the Central Military Hospital's Laboratory, used it for routine antibody screening and identification. It was a reliable instrument. From 2004 as a head of the Immunohematology Reference Laboratory of the National Blood Transfusion Service I used it for comparative tests. Compared were the microplate and column agglutination techniques with this automated tube technique. In several thousands of tests the photosedimentation technique proved to be as sensitive as the column agglutination and slightly more sensitive than the microplate technique. The specificity was about the same. The ACT-24 provides a more cumbersome procedure than the column agglutination, for it does the classical antiglobulin test, inlcuding the washes, on the other hand it is much cheaper and much more flexible: you can vary the proportion of the test participants, use more or less red cells, AHG, etc. It is also possible to use various brands and qualities of reagents. In my present laboratory we use it also for antibody screening and ABO+D typing. This last feature contains the evaluation of the blood group, too.
There are special curved tubes, that is what gets pipetted into. Do not be ashamed, the ACT is produced by a small firm, always in need of capital.