The HiSeq X Flowcell Stage

I’ve previously looked at the HiSeq X fluidic system, but I failed to document the stage. The images above show the how the fluidic system couples to the flowcell. Reagents are distributed to lanes via a “binary splitter line”, you can see these discussed in various Illumina patents:

The idea being that this helps evenly distribute fluid over all lanes. However as far as I can tell they don’t appear to be using the “binary combiner” approach to combine reagents in any of the instrument I’ve looked at. The whole structure looks somewhat awkward to manufacture, perhaps machined and bonded? But seams where not obvious to me:

HiSeq users will also be familiar with the little gaskets that sit inside the manifold, these interface between the glass flowcell and the manifold. Illumina “tips for proper fluids flow” suggest these are kind of a pain and were replaced somewhat regularly.