CO2 enrichment accessories

[Anna Ashton]

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Hi All,

I'm trying to get hold of some parts for CO2 enrichment for live cell imaging, unfortunately solent scientific have stopped making the items that I need.

I need a multiwell plate workhead, and also the small black and red part which connects the tubing from the bottle to the workhead. Both are shown here<https://www.solentsci.com/images/graphics/CO2%20Overview%20Large.jpg>.

I was wondering if anyone has either of these going spare I could buy from you, or know where I could find them?

Any help would be very much appreciated!

Thanks

Anna


Anna Ashton
Post-doctoral Researcher
Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute (SCNi)
Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences
University of Oxford

[Jacqueline Ross]

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Hi Anna,

I'm sorry but I can't help you out with a multiwell workhead as we are still using ours.

However, prior to having the multiwell workhead, we used to pierce the plate with a syringe needle and deliver the gas that way. The only issue we had (apart from the inconvenience of doing this) was the need to make sure that the condenser didn't get in the way when doing multi-position imaging.

Maybe this is an option for you in the meantime.

Kind regards,

Jacqui
________________________________________
From: Confocal Microscopy List [[hidden email]] on behalf of Anna Ashton [[hidden email]]
Sent: 18 September 2019 23:27
To: [hidden email]
Subject: CO2 enrichment accessories

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Hi All,

I'm trying to get hold of some parts for CO2 enrichment for live cell imaging, unfortunately solent scientific have stopped making the items that I need.

I need a multiwell plate workhead, and also the small black and red part which connects the tubing from the bottle to the workhead. Both are shown here<https://www.solentsci.com/images/graphics/CO2%20Overview%20Large.jpg>.

I was wondering if anyone has either of these going spare I could buy from you, or know where I could find them?

Any help would be very much appreciated!

Thanks

Anna


Anna Ashton
Post-doctoral Researcher
Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute (SCNi)
Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences
University of Oxford

[daj1u06]

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Hi Anna, we just 3D print new holders and covers for any type of dish in plastic (PLA) with thin glass lids (either extra large coverslips or extra large microscope slides (patholgy labs have these) held in with silicone) as we need them. Happy to share CAD files with anyone who wants them.

Tubing connectors, go to Cole Palmer web site and look for leur fittings, they have 100s of variants available.

 For multiwall plates, we use a wide bore (cream hub, 19G) hypodermic needle  - heat one to red heat and insert through side wall immediately below lid in middle of short end. Withdraw and reheat and then push back through first hole and through first dam between wells. Replace with clean needle and bend needle slightly so plate can fit into carrier snuggly without the needle lifting one end up. Coming in from side rather than top avoids any issues with condensor. we tend to tape the gas delivery tubing onto the stage to prevent needle moving through tubing flex as stage moves

Regards,

DAJ
Dave Johnston
Light Microscopy Manager,
Biomedical Imaging Unit,
Faculty of Medicine, University of Southampton and University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust

MP12, Level B, Lab and Path Block, University Hospital Southampton, Tremona Road, Southampton, SO16 7LS.
tel: [phone]
email: [hidden email]

[Arvydas Matiukas]

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Dear Microscopists,

I am worried that high usage volume over 4000hrs/year that started  two years ago and likely will continue can  shorten useful lifetime of our confocal (in terms of service years or hours).

I expect properly maintained confocal to last about 10 years or 20,000 hrs. Similarly, a car is expected to last 10 years or 100k miles, however sometimes it drives 100k in 3 years ending at  the intermediate condition and value. Please share your experience after how many hours or years of usage  Core should start planning the replacement of the heavily used confocal.

Thanks,
Arvydas







+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Arvydas Matiukas, Ph.D.
Manager of NRB Shared Equipment
Director of Confocal&Two-Photon Core
SUNY Upstate Medical University

[0000001ed7f52e4a-dmarc-request]

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Dear Arvydas,
As you are comparing microscopes with cars, it might be interesting that some (German) car companies used to give the owner a golden medal after 500,000 kilometers which the proud owner could fix on the radiator grill (this was long ago), you can still find them on eBay. There are also anecdotes about cars which made 1 Mio km.
We have one microscope which after 11 years and about 14,000 hours had a lot of repairs, but is still going strong now after 13 years and higher workload. With 4000 hours/year, a maintenance contract would make sense, I guess you will go through a lot of lasers which otherwise will be costly to replace, other movable parts like the scanner and even electronics like AOTF controllers or power supplies also seem to fail after some years. But when replacing all these parts (with considerable downtime) it should be possible to run a system with high workload for 15 years or longer. You might want to get a new set of objectives though. The question is, if you really want to wait so long to replace it, as technology  constantly improves. Especially detectors and electronics will be better for a new microscope and the users will miss out on these improvements.  
One point to consider is that after a microscope model has gone out of production, there will  be only a limited time when for spare parts and maintenance contracts to be available, maybe 6 - 10 years. With product cycles becoming shorter, we might  not even be able to run a microscope for 10 years, especially when it was bought at the end of its cycle. 
best wishes
Andreas



-----Original Message-----
From: Arvydas Matiukas <[hidden email]>
To: CONFOCALMICROSCOPY <[hidden email]>
Sent: Sun, 22 Sep 2019 2:55
Subject: Confocal lifetime question

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Dear Microscopists,

I am worried that high usage volume over 4000hrs/year that started  two years ago and likely will continue can  shorten useful lifetime of our confocal (in terms of service years or hours).

I expect properly maintained confocal to last about 10 years or 20,000 hrs. Similarly, a car is expected to last 10 years or 100k miles, however sometimes it drives 100k in 3 years ending at  the intermediate condition and value. Please share your experience after how many hours or years of usage  Core should start planning the replacement of the heavily used confocal.

Thanks,
Arvydas







+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Arvydas Matiukas, Ph.D.
Manager of NRB Shared Equipment
Director of Confocal&Two-Photon Core
SUNY Upstate Medical University

[Arvydas Matiukas]

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Hello Andreas,

thanks for interesting thoughts. On the practical side my concern is related to the two sides or steps of the research equipment replacement/upgrade process in Core facility:
1) CONFOCAL PERFORMANCE DEGRADATION. I assume it was not a coincidence that shortly after the manufacturer ended support of our 13 year old confocal its performance degraded to such level that it could not longer support some imaging applications. Then most users switched to the newer generation confocal that experienced 2x increase in usage, and even by some magic the performance would be restored I doubt that users would switch back because they already "got taste" of newer technology. Here the conclusion that useful lifetime of confocal (in research environment) is about 10 years or 20k hours (whichever comes first), and after that the instrument needs to be replaced. The old confocal serves only as a last option backup.

2) CONFOCAL REPLACEMENT/UPGRADE CYCLE. My main concern is how much time is left to prepare and complete the replacement, i.e. how long current confocal will last being used 4000hrs/year on top of already accumulated 10k hours. Manufacturer
 maintenance is expected, however I strongly doubt that the useful lifetime could reach 50k hours (13 years x 4k), because not all replaced parts will be new, and field servicing does not equal factory.


Regarding the comparison with car lifetime/maintenance. My second car is 16 years old with 180k mileage, and it is still good to drive locally and ocassionally. However research (and especially winning grant awards) is like a race so reseachers cjoose to drive a Ferrari, not Kia.


Best wishes,
Arvydas

>>> Andreas Bruckbauer <[hidden email]> 09/22/19 12:05 PM >>>
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*****

Dear Arvydas,
As you are comparing microscopes with cars, it might be interesting that some (German) car companies used to give the owner a golden medal after 500,000 kilometers which the proud owner could fix on the radiator grill (this was long ago), you can still find them on eBay. There are also anecdotes about cars which made 1 Mio km.
We have one microscope which after 11 years and about 14,000 hours had a lot of repairs, but is still going strong now after 13 years and higher workload. With 4000 hours/year, a maintenance contract would make sense, I guess you will go through a lot of lasers which otherwise will be costly to replace, other movable parts like the scanner and even electronics like AOTF controllers or power supplies also seem to fail after some years. But when replacing all these parts (with considerable downtime) it should be possible to run a system with high workload for 15 years or longer. You might want to get a new set of objectives though. The question is, if you really want to wait so long to replace it, as technology  constantly improves. Especially detectors and electronics will be better for a new microscope and the users will miss out on these improvements.  
One point to consider is that after a microscope model has gone out of production, there will  be only a limited time when for spare parts and maintenance contracts to be available, maybe 6 - 10 years. With product cycles becoming shorter, we might  not even be able to run a microscope for 10 years, especially when it was bought at the end of its cycle.
best wishes
Andreas



-----Original Message-----
From: Arvydas Matiukas <[hidden email]>
To: CONFOCALMICROSCOPY <[hidden email]>
Sent: Sun, 22 Sep 2019 2:55
Subject: Confocal lifetime question

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*****

Dear Microscopists,

I am worried that high usage volume over 4000hrs/year that started  two years ago and likely will continue can  shorten useful lifetime of our confocal (in terms of service years or hours).

I expect properly maintained confocal to last about 10 years or 20,000 hrs. Similarly, a car is expected to last 10 years or 100k miles, however sometimes it drives 100k in 3 years ending at  the intermediate condition and value. Please share your experience after how many hours or years of usage  Core should start planning the replacement of the heavily used confocal.

Thanks,
Arvydas







+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Arvydas Matiukas, Ph.D.
Manager of NRB Shared Equipment
Director of Confocal&Two-Photon Core
SUNY Upstate Medical University

[Rosemary White]

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Hi Arvydas,

We've judged the lifetime of our confocals by how long the manufacturer is willing to repair it. Our old confocal (purchase 2000) kept going for 14 years, but eventually could no longer be repaired. In the interim, our new confocal (purchase 2012) had way more features and of course people switched to it.

We managed to convince the powers that be that a maintenance contract was essential, and this has been very worthwhile - couple of lasers replaced already, and we can call the engineers any time for repairs or to realign components, etc. We can expect this instrument to be serviced by the manufacturer up to about 2024.

However, the writing is on the wall so we have to start lobbying for a new instrument, because it takes 2-3 years for powers that be to fund instruments, then at least a further year before the tenders are complete and an instrument is purchased.

I know of one facility that kept at least one quite ancient and highly used confocal going for 20 years before mothballing it.

That's how we operate. I hope this helps a bit. Those rules of thumb about confocal lifetime are very rubbery, some confocals are great and go a long time without needing much attention, some are not so great. Just like cars...

cheers,
Rosemary

Dr Rosemary White
CSIRO Black Mountain
GPO Box 1700
ACT 2601, Australia

M: 61-0468966713
E: [hidden email]
________________________________________
From: Confocal Microscopy List [[hidden email]] on behalf of Arvydas Matiukas [[hidden email]]
Sent: Monday, 23 September 2019 9:15 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: Confocal lifetime question

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Hello Andreas,

thanks for interesting thoughts. On the practical side my concern is related to the two sides or steps of the research equipment replacement/upgrade process in Core facility:
1) CONFOCAL PERFORMANCE DEGRADATION. I assume it was not a coincidence that shortly after the manufacturer ended support of our 13 year old confocal its performance degraded to such level that it could not longer support some imaging applications. Then most users switched to the newer generation confocal that experienced 2x increase in usage, and even by some magic the performance would be restored I doubt that users would switch back because they already "got taste" of newer technology. Here the conclusion that useful lifetime of confocal (in research environment) is about 10 years or 20k hours (whichever comes first), and after that the instrument needs to be replaced. The old confocal serves only as a last option backup.

2) CONFOCAL REPLACEMENT/UPGRADE CYCLE. My main concern is how much time is left to prepare and complete the replacement, i.e. how long current confocal will last being used 4000hrs/year on top of already accumulated 10k hours. Manufacturer
 maintenance is expected, however I strongly doubt that the useful lifetime could reach 50k hours (13 years x 4k), because not all replaced parts will be new, and field servicing does not equal factory.


Regarding the comparison with car lifetime/maintenance. My second car is 16 years old with 180k mileage, and it is still good to drive locally and ocassionally. However research (and especially winning grant awards) is like a race so reseachers cjoose to drive a Ferrari, not Kia.


Best wishes,
Arvydas

>>> Andreas Bruckbauer <[hidden email]> 09/22/19 12:05 PM >>>
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*****

Dear Arvydas,
As you are comparing microscopes with cars, it might be interesting that some (German) car companies used to give the owner a golden medal after 500,000 kilometers which the proud owner could fix on the radiator grill (this was long ago), you can still find them on eBay. There are also anecdotes about cars which made 1 Mio km.
We have one microscope which after 11 years and about 14,000 hours had a lot of repairs, but is still going strong now after 13 years and higher workload. With 4000 hours/year, a maintenance contract would make sense, I guess you will go through a lot of lasers which otherwise will be costly to replace, other movable parts like the scanner and even electronics like AOTF controllers or power supplies also seem to fail after some years. But when replacing all these parts (with considerable downtime) it should be possible to run a system with high workload for 15 years or longer. You might want to get a new set of objectives though. The question is, if you really want to wait so long to replace it, as technology  constantly improves. Especially detectors and electronics will be better for a new microscope and the users will miss out on these improvements.
One point to consider is that after a microscope model has gone out of production, there will  be only a limited time when for spare parts and maintenance contracts to be available, maybe 6 - 10 years. With product cycles becoming shorter, we might  not even be able to run a microscope for 10 years, especially when it was bought at the end of its cycle.
best wishes
Andreas



-----Original Message-----
From: Arvydas Matiukas <[hidden email]>
To: CONFOCALMICROSCOPY <[hidden email]>
Sent: Sun, 22 Sep 2019 2:55
Subject: Confocal lifetime question

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*****

Dear Microscopists,

I am worried that high usage volume over 4000hrs/year that started  two years ago and likely will continue can  shorten useful lifetime of our confocal (in terms of service years or hours).

I expect properly maintained confocal to last about 10 years or 20,000 hrs. Similarly, a car is expected to last 10 years or 100k miles, however sometimes it drives 100k in 3 years ending at  the intermediate condition and value. Please share your experience after how many hours or years of usage  Core should start planning the replacement of the heavily used confocal.

Thanks,
Arvydas







+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Arvydas Matiukas, Ph.D.
Manager of NRB Shared Equipment
Director of Confocal&Two-Photon Core
SUNY Upstate Medical University

[George McNamara]

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Hi Arvydas,

congratulations on your high usage success.  If enough use is from NIH
funded investigators, I suggest you start organizing the shared
instrument grant proposal(s) for the replacement(s). Lots of demo data
is good! With 4000 hours / year, should be thinking about multiple
instruments (though maybe need to wait a year to submit second one).
Could also ask your U.S. senators and local representative to boost
NIH's SIG budget by, say, $1B.

Most of the confocal vendors have lease-to-buy programs, with (say) 5
year lease. Also need to cover service contract. If total cost is (say)
$400,000 and you had 10,000 hours on THAT ONE confocal in five years.
would be $40/hr to cover instrument cost. But, if you were awarded a SIG
for the identical instrument (and get a nice trade in for the current
scanhead), and total cost over 5 years for the TWO instruments was
$500,000, divide by (4K/year * 5 years) 20,000 hours = $25/hr. Quite
reasonable user rate wrt just the instruments, and could either be
identical, or one could have live cell stuff and the other not.

In the meantime you might be able to improve performance with:

* one or more new (or used in new like condition) objective lenses.
Locally, we (my predecessor John Gibas, and prior core director, Prof.
Olga Kovbasnjuk) had a big success with a "like new, nice price" plan
apo 40x/1.4NA from a local company, www.baltpi.com for our now retired
LSM (scan head traded in toward the new FV3000RS ... some day: X-line
objective lenses for that).

* new PC ... or some new components in PC, to get data acquired, saved,
transferred out, quicker ... my motto: "instant gratification". Some
examples:

    * 10 Gbe (10 gigabit/sec = 1.25 Gigabytes / sec) Ethernet on both
the confocal PC and destination (or 10 Gbe switch, so more local PC's
with 10 Gbe cards can benefit ... 100 Gbe something to think about for
next year).

    * SATA SSDs, ideally array, or even faster, M.2 cards, ideally array
(yes, HDD array, if big enough and right RAID controller, or on Windows
10, Microsoft Storage Spaces, can do this ... any of these useful on PC
/ file server transferring out to the users). I've been buying Samsung
860 Pro SSDs, larger capacity than whatever previous C: drive, and using
Samsung's migration tool to clone the drive onto the new SSD (just
starting to use M.2's).

* does everyone need confocal? ... a widefield fluorescence microscope +
GPU deconvolution would be faster than point scanning confocal.

enjoy,

George

On 9/22/2019 7:15 PM, Arvydas Matiukas wrote:

> *****
> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
> http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
> Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
> *****
>
> Hello Andreas,
>
> thanks for interesting thoughts. On the practical side my concern is related to the two sides or steps of the research equipment replacement/upgrade process in Core facility:
> 1) CONFOCAL PERFORMANCE DEGRADATION. I assume it was not a coincidence that shortly after the manufacturer ended support of our 13 year old confocal its performance degraded to such level that it could not longer support some imaging applications. Then most users switched to the newer generation confocal that experienced 2x increase in usage, and even by some magic the performance would be restored I doubt that users would switch back because they already "got taste" of newer technology. Here the conclusion that useful lifetime of confocal (in research environment) is about 10 years or 20k hours (whichever comes first), and after that the instrument needs to be replaced. The old confocal serves only as a last option backup.
>
> 2) CONFOCAL REPLACEMENT/UPGRADE CYCLE. My main concern is how much time is left to prepare and complete the replacement, i.e. how long current confocal will last being used 4000hrs/year on top of already accumulated 10k hours. Manufacturer
>   maintenance is expected, however I strongly doubt that the useful lifetime could reach 50k hours (13 years x 4k), because not all replaced parts will be new, and field servicing does not equal factory.
>
>
> Regarding the comparison with car lifetime/maintenance. My second car is 16 years old with 180k mileage, and it is still good to drive locally and ocassionally. However research (and especially winning grant awards) is like a race so reseachers cjoose to drive a Ferrari, not Kia.
>
>
> Best wishes,
> Arvydas
>
>>>> Andreas Bruckbauer <[hidden email]> 09/22/19 12:05 PM >>>
> *****
> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__lists.umn.edu_cgi-2Dbin_wa-3FA0-3Dconfocalmicroscopy&d=DwIFaQ&c=ogn2iPkgF7TkVSicOVBfKg&r=DtXPX1Vw9uh8rqlCEC9BTBr2oYBP4dEG1ecsgK6l-4k&m=aHU9RKEZ2TAvMNe210EUZBxbDrg_LdpTRZwuIGBQQaE&s=LO4d_g1BRj0h33XR3d87a8UPXGJL09Av0dtHyx_cVb4&e=
> Post images on https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.imgur.com&d=DwIFaQ&c=ogn2iPkgF7TkVSicOVBfKg&r=DtXPX1Vw9uh8rqlCEC9BTBr2oYBP4dEG1ecsgK6l-4k&m=aHU9RKEZ2TAvMNe210EUZBxbDrg_LdpTRZwuIGBQQaE&s=UAT_3-9MboatWs5xrSz98IoAStsuabtqcknGVqf1OuE&e=  and include the link in your posting.
> *****
>
> Dear Arvydas,
> As you are comparing microscopes with cars, it might be interesting that some (German) car companies used to give the owner a golden medal after 500,000 kilometers which the proud owner could fix on the radiator grill (this was long ago), you can still find them on eBay. There are also anecdotes about cars which made 1 Mio km.
> We have one microscope which after 11 years and about 14,000 hours had a lot of repairs, but is still going strong now after 13 years and higher workload. With 4000 hours/year, a maintenance contract would make sense, I guess you will go through a lot of lasers which otherwise will be costly to replace, other movable parts like the scanner and even electronics like AOTF controllers or power supplies also seem to fail after some years. But when replacing all these parts (with considerable downtime) it should be possible to run a system with high workload for 15 years or longer. You might want to get a new set of objectives though. The question is, if you really want to wait so long to replace it, as technology  constantly improves. Especially detectors and electronics will be better for a new microscope and the users will miss out on these improvements.
> One point to consider is that after a microscope model has gone out of production, there will  be only a limited time when for spare parts and maintenance contracts to be available, maybe 6 - 10 years. With product cycles becoming shorter, we might  not even be able to run a microscope for 10 years, especially when it was bought at the end of its cycle.
> best wishes
> Andreas
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Arvydas Matiukas <[hidden email]>
> To: CONFOCALMICROSCOPY <[hidden email]>
> Sent: Sun, 22 Sep 2019 2:55
> Subject: Confocal lifetime question
>
> *****
>
> Dear Microscopists,
>
> I am worried that high usage volume over 4000hrs/year that started  two years ago and likely will continue can  shorten useful lifetime of our confocal (in terms of service years or hours).
>
> I expect properly maintained confocal to last about 10 years or 20,000 hrs. Similarly, a car is expected to last 10 years or 100k miles, however sometimes it drives 100k in 3 years ending at  the intermediate condition and value. Please share your experience after how many hours or years of usage  Core should start planning the replacement of the heavily used confocal.
>
> Thanks,
> Arvydas
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> Arvydas Matiukas, Ph.D.
> Manager of NRB Shared Equipment
> Director of Confocal&Two-Photon Core
> SUNY Upstate Medical University

[ICIT]

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Dear Arvydas,
your question is always a very good one for many core facilities and institutes with point scanning confocals. While it seems on occasion the readiness, capability or possibilities for vendors to maintain a certain older generation system in good functional state the motivation to promote the sales of new ones with more goodies never stalls.

Based on my information and/or experiences there is a significant proportion of users who will use a confocal even when they would be well off with a good wide-field and/or deconvolution (as George suggested, fully copy that!). The reasons for this are too many fold to get into details (availability, ingorance, unawareness, politics) but surely cutting the proportion of samples that would not need a confocal to minimum would save a lot of working hours for your lasers. The politics part is in itself pretty interesting as in particular in high ranking prestige institutes the users are urged to use the best possible equipment instead of the most suitable. It is for a PI surely more lucrative in a meeting to mention the data was recorded with a 1 million bucks confocal of latest design than on a 20 years old widefield. This is part of the corporate profile where no institute wants to be poorer than the other one. So de facto one reason for this waste of resources can be egoistic one.

Now comes the commercial part, feel free to read or change the channel: As a local distributor for a laser-free spinning disk confocal add-on systems I quite often see systems with optically good microscope frame with dead lasers. Even more often when having a demo on my systems I come across users who are absolutely fascinated to have an alternative to use a system that generates equal data in a more elegant way...and consequently really happy to have alternatives that do the job without too much gadgets (or buttons/options to learn).

Make the story short: perhaps next time when the laser battery or the scan head needs to be replaced one could consider either a good wide field with a good well documented and user controllable deconvolution and/or an after sales add-on alternative?

Wishing you lot of luck with the present system, though!

>m

[Giang, William]

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Hi Arvydas,

Hardware concerns have already been addressed by other people, so I'll bring up the software side of 10 year old confocals in a core facility.

With Windows 7 losing support in January 2020, our IT department is planning on isolating any computers from the {intra, inter}net.

While our FV1000s still function, the following will be disrupted.
1. Stratocore, our usage tracking software for cost recovery, needs internet access.
2. Images acquired on our scopes get robocopy'd to network attached storage for ease of access/discouraging flash drive usage


We also inquired how much it would be to get our Nikon A1R to a Windows 10 system. The giga channel board was ~$6000 by itself.

Side note: I want to clear up the misconception that "M.2 drives are better than SATA drives." "M.2" refers to the form factor. There are M.2 SATA SSDs and M.2 NVMe SSDs.

Best,
Will


-----Original Message-----
From: Confocal Microscopy List [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Arvydas Matiukas
Sent: Saturday, September 21, 2019 9:32 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: [External] Confocal lifetime question

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Dear Microscopists,

I am worried that high usage volume over 4000hrs/year that started  two years ago and likely will continue can  shorten useful lifetime of our confocal (in terms of service years or hours).

I expect properly maintained confocal to last about 10 years or 20,000 hrs. Similarly, a car is expected to last 10 years or 100k miles, however sometimes it drives 100k in 3 years ending at  the intermediate condition and value. Please share your experience after how many hours or years of usage  Core should start planning the replacement of the heavily used confocal.

Thanks,
Arvydas







+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Arvydas Matiukas, Ph.D.
Manager of NRB Shared Equipment
Director of Confocal&Two-Photon Core
SUNY Upstate Medical University

________________________________

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If you have received this message in error, please contact
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[Cammer, Michael]

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I would like to reiterate "computers" because it is the single biggest problem.  As individual parts wear out, they may be replaced.  We have shutters and filter wheels and lenses dating back to circa 2000 that still work with serial control (even after the wires have gotten sticky), but we have a few cameras (Cooke PCO, Photometrics, Hamamatsu) that are great, but collecting dust because when the computers die, that's it, no slots or drivers for new computers.  I've seen high end confocals decommissioned because of computer hardware and operating system obsolescence.  Yes, the newer ones are better, but as workhorse instruments, it would be great if we could keep the older ones running.  (If I'm not mistaken, the real time controller for the Zeiss 710 and 880 are old technology that Zeiss wisely keeps alive.)

To confirm other replies:  the lifetime of high end confocals is defined by the manufacturer's willingness to provide service and by the human interface, a.k.a. computer.

Cheers-

Michael Cammer, Sr Research Scientist, DART Microscopy Laboratory
NYU Langone Health, 540 First Avenue, SK2 Microscopy Suite, New York, NY  10016
Office: 646-501-0567 Cell: 914-309-3270  [hidden email]  
http://nyulmc.org/micros  http://microscopynotes.com/




-----Original Message-----
From: Confocal Microscopy List <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Giang, William
Sent: Monday, September 23, 2019 10:26 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [External] Confocal lifetime question

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Hi Arvydas,

Hardware concerns have already been addressed by other people, so I'll bring up the software side of 10 year old confocals in a core facility.

With Windows 7 losing support in January 2020, our IT department is planning on isolating any computers from the {intra, inter}net.

While our FV1000s still function, the following will be disrupted.
1. Stratocore, our usage tracking software for cost recovery, needs internet access.
2. Images acquired on our scopes get robocopy'd to network attached storage for ease of access/discouraging flash drive usage


We also inquired how much it would be to get our Nikon A1R to a Windows 10 system. The giga channel board was ~$6000 by itself.

Side note: I want to clear up the misconception that "M.2 drives are better than SATA drives." "M.2" refers to the form factor. There are M.2 SATA SSDs and M.2 NVMe SSDs.

Best,
Will


-----Original Message-----
From: Confocal Microscopy List [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Arvydas Matiukas
Sent: Saturday, September 21, 2019 9:32 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: [External] Confocal lifetime question


Dear Microscopists,

I am worried that high usage volume over 4000hrs/year that started  two years ago and likely will continue can  shorten useful lifetime of our confocal (in terms of service years or hours).

I expect properly maintained confocal to last about 10 years or 20,000 hrs. Similarly, a car is expected to last 10 years or 100k miles, however sometimes it drives 100k in 3 years ending at  the intermediate condition and value. Please share your experience after how many hours or years of usage  Core should start planning the replacement of the heavily used confocal.

Thanks,
Arvydas







+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Arvydas Matiukas, Ph.D.
Manager of NRB Shared Equipment
Director of Confocal&Two-Photon Core
SUNY Upstate Medical University

________________________________

This e-mail message (including any attachments) is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this message (including any attachments) is strictly prohibited.

If you have received this message in error, please contact the sender by reply e-mail message and destroy all copies of the original message (including attachments).

[Armstrong, Brian]

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Hello, I agree with what has been said thus far. The "brass and glass" components don't really wear much in my experience. The lifetime of a Confocal system is more importantly related to the computer technology. A 7 year Confocal system will run as new if properly maintained but the hardware/software of the computer will be outdated. If you want to keep your core on the cutting edge you should stay abreast of the computer tech and not just the microscope itself. Of course the lasers do have a specific lifetime range and may need to be replaced on your system. Moreover the glass, such as main-beam-splitter etc, will take abuse from constant laser bombardment. The other pertinent measure of age, as already stated, is the willingness of the selling company to support repair of the instrument. There are third party companies that will maintain old systems but that will give you an idea that the instrument is getting to an age where it needs to be replaced. I usually try to purchase a year in advance as to when I think the Confocal instrument will become outdated. Our instruments are also heavily used and I do not want to take the chance of being down one instrument.

*My hobby outside of old German microscopes is repairing old German cars so I appreciate the reference. :) You can Google "million mile Mercedes" to get an idea of longevity of German engineering.
Cheers,  

Brian Armstrong PhD
Associate Research Professor
Developmental and Stem Cell Biology
Diabetes and Metabolic Diseases
Director, Light Microscopy Core
Beckman Research Institute, City of Hope


-----Original Message-----
From: Confocal Microscopy List [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Andreas Bruckbauer
Sent: Sunday, September 22, 2019 9:05 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: Confocal lifetime question

[Attention: This email came from an external source. Do not open attachments or click on links from unknown senders or unexpected emails.]





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Dear Arvydas,
As you are comparing microscopes with cars, it might be interesting that some (German) car companies used to give the owner a golden medal after 500,000 kilometers which the proud owner could fix on the radiator grill (this was long ago), you can still find them on eBay. There are also anecdotes about cars which made 1 Mio km.
We have one microscope which after 11 years and about 14,000 hours had a lot of repairs, but is still going strong now after 13 years and higher workload. With 4000 hours/year, a maintenance contract would make sense, I guess you will go through a lot of lasers which otherwise will be costly to replace, other movable parts like the scanner and even electronics like AOTF controllers or power supplies also seem to fail after some years. But when replacing all these parts (with considerable downtime) it should be possible to run a system with high workload for 15 years or longer. You might want to get a new set of objectives though. The question is, if you really want to wait so long to replace it, as technology  constantly improves. Especially detectors and electronics will be better for a new microscope and the users will miss out on these improvements. One point to consider is that after a microscope model has gone out of production, there will  be only a limited time when for spare parts and maintenance contracts to be available, maybe 6 - 10 years. With product cycles becoming shorter, we might  not even be able to run a microscope for 10 years, especially when it was bought at the end of its cycle. best wishes Andreas



-----Original Message-----
From: Arvydas Matiukas <[hidden email]>
To: CONFOCALMICROSCOPY <[hidden email]>
Sent: Sun, 22 Sep 2019 2:55
Subject: Confocal lifetime question

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Dear Microscopists,

I am worried that high usage volume over 4000hrs/year that started  two years ago and likely will continue can  shorten useful lifetime of our confocal (in terms of service years or hours).

I expect properly maintained confocal to last about 10 years or 20,000 hrs. Similarly, a car is expected to last 10 years or 100k miles, however sometimes it drives 100k in 3 years ending at  the intermediate condition and value. Please share your experience after how many hours or years of usage  Core should start planning the replacement of the heavily used confocal.

Thanks,
Arvydas







+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Arvydas Matiukas, Ph.D.
Manager of NRB Shared Equipment
Director of Confocal&Two-Photon Core
SUNY Upstate Medical University

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One of our confocals (Olympus FV1000) that is now 15 years old. It is not as heavily used as yours, but over the years I have not noticed a significant degradation in performance. We never had a service contract, and in our case it paid off, since it was mostly trouble free. I moved it twice (once to a different room, second time to a different building) and it just kept going. We only had one major repair (galvos) about 6 years ago. About 4 years ago we upgraded the computer/OS,  and got additional (GaAsP) detectors.  Otherwise it is just the matter of dealing with the "consumables" - replacing and realigning the Argon laser - they last about 5000 hours, we are on a fourth laser (I have a spare that I get re-built when the one on the microscope starts failing), I also replaced the 543 nm HeNe laser few years back.
I do agree that the availability of parts and service is going to be an issue on these older systems. The 405nm laser power has been going down lately, both due to the laser itself and the fiber optic cable for that laser. These parts are no longer available from the manufacturer, but luckily for a fraction of the cost I got a well functioning replacement off Ebay.

When Windows 7 support ends, we will choose a similar strategy as on our TEM computers (some of  which still run WIndows XP) - disable USB ports on the control computer, dump data to a support PC connected via intranet. Users then copy data from the support PC.


Best Regards,
Stan Vitha
Microscopy and Imaging Center
Texas A&M University





 

[Craig Brideau]

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To add to the general trend, I agree your big limitation is software
compatibility and the computer hardware running it. I've provided help to
listers before getting their old Nikon C1 computers repaired or upgraded
and sourcing compatible hardware was the biggest hurdle. You can image the
operating system drive to have some insurance against viruses or drive
failure, but you still need to find a motherboard, memory, etc. that will
function with XP and win7. I'd recommend picking up spare computer
components while you can and storing them. When the electronics fail you
can just swap out the parts from your inventory.
Regarding the microscope hardware itself, as others have mentioned galvos
wear out eventually (you can consider picking up spare sets of these as
well as they can go out of production) and of course the lasers eventually
fail. The lasers are not as great a problem as it is relatively
straightforward to jury-rig a modern laser into an obsolete system; the
newer ones tend to be smaller that the older ones, giving you plenty of
room for adapters.
Also consider that photomultiplier tubes have limited lifespan. I've coaxed
10 years out of conventional PMTs, but have had GaAsP detectors wear out in
two years. You will notice an increase in background signal as they start
to go.

Craig


On Mon, Sep 23, 2019 at 12:05 PM Stanislav Vitha <[hidden email]> wrote:

> *****
> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
> http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
> Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
> *****
>
> One of our confocals (Olympus FV1000) that is now 15 years old. It is not
> as heavily used as yours, but over the years I have not noticed a
> significant degradation in performance. We never had a service contract,
> and in our case it paid off, since it was mostly trouble free. I moved it
> twice (once to a different room, second time to a different building) and
> it just kept going. We only had one major repair (galvos) about 6 years
> ago. About 4 years ago we upgraded the computer/OS,  and got additional
> (GaAsP) detectors.  Otherwise it is just the matter of dealing with the
> "consumables" - replacing and realigning the Argon laser - they last about
> 5000 hours, we are on a fourth laser (I have a spare that I get re-built
> when the one on the microscope starts failing), I also replaced the 543 nm
> HeNe laser few years back.
> I do agree that the availability of parts and service is going to be an
> issue on these older systems. The 405nm laser power has been going down
> lately, both due to the laser itself and the fiber optic cable for that
> laser. These parts are no longer available from the manufacturer, but
> luckily for a fraction of the cost I got a well functioning replacement off
> Ebay.
>
> When Windows 7 support ends, we will choose a similar strategy as on our
> TEM computers (some of  which still run WIndows XP) - disable USB ports on
> the control computer, dump data to a support PC connected via intranet.
> Users then copy data from the support PC.
>
>
> Best Regards,
> Stan Vitha
> Microscopy and Imaging Center
> Texas A&M University
>
>
>
>
>
>
>