A modified robotic workstation has been developed which is able to reproduce a conventional catalyst preparation method used routinely in our laboratory, thereby increasing significantly the number of catalysts that can be prepared at once. This paper describes some of the features of this modified system and outlines some of the difficulties encountered in transferring from manual to automatic operation. Some catalytic test results are given for the selective oxidation of propane over a catalyst consisting of Mo-V-Nb-W oxides supported on alumina which illustrate good reproducibility of data for samples prepared with the robotic system and a close similarity with data obtained with equivalent manually prepared materials. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.