Zeiss service contract: options and alternatives

[Arvydas Matiukas]

Hello confocal people,

 

I need an advice/recommandations regarding long term (up to 10 years)

efficient service strategy for Zeiss confocal machines (LSM 510 or similar).

 

I have been supervizing LSM510 NLO for three years, and so far my experience

with (standard) Zeiss service contract was generally OK.

 

However basic question is about the long term strategy, and specifically my former

colleagues from Lithuania who are buying a new Zeiss confocal system

are interested in a long-term optimal service quality/cost ratio. You know, they are at

state university, so after huge initial injection ($1M) it will be quite dififcult to

get any substiantial support (i.e. <$10k/year). Under these circumstances,

at what age of the confocal system it may be  reasonable to drop (standard)

Zeiss service contract and switch to on-demand service.

 

It would greatly appreciate if experienced confocal people (ay any country,

especially having older machines, 4-10 year old)

would comment on cost-efficient service/maintenance strategies, drawbacks of

dropping Zeiss service contract, and average/potential lifetimes/breaks of key

components of the confocal system. The system is expected to be used

~1000hrs/year.

 

It is not very urgent issue, and I would appreciate sharing any experience/ideas/strategies.

Maybe this post will inspire exchange of views/ideas useful for many confocal people.

 

 

Many thanks,

Arvydas

 

—--------------------------------------------

 

 

 

Arvydas Matiukas, Ph.D.
Director of Confocal&Two-Photon Imaging Core Facility
Department of Pharmacology
SUNY Upstate Medical University
766 Irving Ave., WH 3159
Syracuse, NY 13210
tel.: [phone]
fax: [phone]
email: [hidden email]

[Julio Vazquez]

Search the CONFOCAL archive at http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?S1=confocal -

Hello Arvydas, 

This is a tough choice to make, especially under a limited resources situation.  I guess the best approach is too have a look at the numbers, and more particularly in your part of the world, since things may be a bit different depending on the location.  Therefore, I would suggest that you also try to contact other Zeiss LSM owners in your neighborhood, some of whom may not be on the listserver. I believe there was also a thread on maintenance contracts in this listserver some time ago, so you may want to look there too. 

My experience is from running a shared facility, and we have a 4 year old LSM 510 NLO.  A service contract for us would cost about US $ 25,000. Over 10 years, this will add up to $ 250,000... a huge amount of money. (I am not considering here the additional two-photon laser, whose maintenance is handled by Coherent)

On the other hand, we expect the main costs to result from laser replacement. I am assuming an average lifetime of 4 years for each of the Argon and the two HeNe lasers (this may vary depending on how much you use them, and what mode you use them (few, long runs, or many, small runs, which likely will be worse, I suppose).  An Ar laser can be purchased for about $ 7,000, while HeNe lasers run around 1,500-2,000.  So the expected cost of replacement is maybe 25,00-30,000 over 10 years. This is the cost for the parts, assuming you purchase the lasers and install them yourself.  Clearly, to me, this sounds like the most affordable solution.  Occasionally, you will have a serious problem requiring a service visit, or on occasion sending a scanner to the factory for service, which may be very costly, but probably less than the $ 250,000 of maintenance contract. 

In this sense, if I were to drop the maintenance contract, I probably would drop it immediately after the end of the 1-year warranty period (unless, which may be a good thing, you purchased a second year maintenance straight at the beginning. I say this because it is often easier to get a large chunk of money at the time of purchase, but not so afterwards.. in that case, if you can, you should take advantage of it and get additional maintenance time, unless you have better uses for the money). My reasoning is that if there are problems, they are likely to happen in the first year (and be fixed under warranty). If you have many problems the first year, that may encourage you (or scare you) into buying additional maintenance contract. If things are fine the first year, I tend to believe they will be fine for a while, with a bit of luck and good instrument care. Keeping a maintenance contract for four years and dropping it then may be a waste, since more problems are likely to happen as the machine gets older, so I would save my money in the beginning. 

This discussion assumes that, except for repairs that need to be done by Zeiss, other things (mainly laser purchase and replacement) will be done by you. If you will have the vendor perform all service and part replacements, you need to consider the actual cost of doing so. We've had vendors charge three times as much as others for similar work, so my advice would be to ask around to see how your vendor has performed in your region, and what the prevalent rates are... depending on the vendor, it may be more affordable to have a maintenance agreement, although generally it shouldn't (after all, I would not expect a vendor to provide a maintenance contract for less than the average expected costs of parts and labor for the system would be). The vendor may, however,tend to  overcharge for service visits not covered by a contract... 

One thing we try to do, also, is to estimate the maintenance costs and plan that in our budget. Since the costs tend to come in big lumps (occasional laser replacement, major repair), we try to amortize the costs over several years (3-4 years for a laser replacement, for instance). It probably all depends on how those financial issues are handled at your institution.

--

Julio Vazquez,

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

Seattle, WA 98109-1024. USA

[hidden email]

http://www.fhcrc.org/

=

On Feb 1, 2008, at 10:23 AM, Arvydas Matiukas wrote:

Hello confocal people,

 

I need an advice/recommandations regarding long term (up to 10 years)

efficient service strategy for Zeiss confocal machines (LSM 510 or similar).

 

I have been supervizing LSM510 NLO for three years, and so far my experience

with (standard) Zeiss service contract was generally OK.

 

However basic question is about the long term strategy, and specifically my former

colleagues from Lithuania who are buying a new Zeiss confocal system

are interested in a long-term optimal service quality/cost ratio. You know, they are at

state university, so after huge initial injection ($1M) it will be quite dififcult to

get any substiantial support (i.e. <$10k/year). Under these circumstances,

at what age of the confocal system it may be  reasonable to drop (standard)

Zeiss service contract and switch to on-demand service.

 

It would greatly appreciate if experienced confocal people (ay any country,

especially having older machines, 4-10 year old)

would comment on cost-efficient service/maintenance strategies, drawbacks of

dropping Zeiss service contract, and average/potential lifetimes/breaks of key

components of the confocal system. The system is expected to be used

~1000hrs/year.

 

It is not very urgent issue, and I would appreciate sharing any experience/ideas/strategies.

Maybe this post will inspire exchange of views/ideas useful for many confocal people.

 

 

Many thanks,

Arvydas

 

—--------------------------------------------

 

 

 

Arvydas Matiukas, Ph.D.
Director of Confocal&Two-Photon Imaging Core Facility
Department of Pharmacology
SUNY Upstate Medical University
766 Irving Ave., WH 3159
Syracuse, NY 13210
tel.: [phone]
fax: [phone]
email: [hidden email]

[jens rietdorf]

Dear Arvydas,

my (intimate) experience with 8 lsm510 machines is the following; during the first 5 years or 10k usage hours, there is almost no expensive problem, so the service contract is rather unnecessary, as long as you are able to do the minimum cleaning etc yourself. After 5 years or 10k, considerable costs have to be covered, mostly for new lasers (though this may not be the case in the future, if you operate mainly solid state lasers), but also some elctronics problems, new computer etc. To my knowledge (and we in vain have tried to negotiate something alike) there is no 'mobility guarantee' some car companies offer, so you anyways pay all replaced parts, the only costs covered by the service is cleaning (which you can save) and travel of the service people (which may depend on where you are).

We decided against service contracts and will rather replace the machines.

We would strongly appreciate a service contract that covers all costs to have the (or a replacement) microscope operational within 24 hours. It would convert all our troubles into a number which coud be handled.

Hope that helps. Cheers, jens.

Arvydas Matiukas wrote

Search the CONFOCAL archive at
http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?S1=confocal

Hello confocal people,
 
I need an advice/recommandations regarding long term (up to 10 years)
efficient service strategy for Zeiss confocal machines (LSM 510 or
similar).
 
I have been supervizing LSM510 NLO for three years, and so far my
experience
with (standard) Zeiss service contract was generally OK.
 
However basic question is about the long term strategy, and specifically my
former
colleagues from Lithuania who are buying a new Zeiss confocal system
are interested in a long-term optimal service quality/cost ratio. You know,
they are at
state university, so after huge initial injection ($1M) it will be quite
dififcult to
get any substiantial support (i.e. <$10k/year). Under these circumstances,
at what age of the confocal system it may be  reasonable to drop
(standard)
Zeiss service contract and switch to on-demand service.
 
It would greatly appreciate if experienced confocal people (ay any
country,
especially having older machines, 4-10 year old)
would comment on cost-efficient service/maintenance strategies, drawbacks
of
dropping Zeiss service contract, and average/potential lifetimes/breaks of
key
components of the confocal system. The system is expected to be used
~1000hrs/year.
 
It is not very urgent issue, and I would appreciate sharing any
experience/ideas/strategies.
Maybe this post will inspire exchange of views/ideas useful for many
confocal people.
 
 
Many thanks,
Arvydas
 
*--------------------------------------------
 
 
 
Arvydas Matiukas, Ph.D.
Director of Confocal&Two-Photon Imaging Core Facility
Department of Pharmacology
SUNY Upstate Medical University
766 Irving Ave., WH 3159
Syracuse, NY 13210
tel.: [phone]
fax: [phone]
email: [e-mail]

[Michael Weber-4]

Search the CONFOCAL archive at
http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?S1=confocal

Arvydas,

as already mentioned, the first years with the confocal are usually
quite. Try to get warranty as long as you can, so that there's enough
time to tune the system in a way that it works for the projects and
explore all the misalignments that where made during installation. This
time can also be used to show the university that the system gets used.

After warranty it's getting tricky. My opinion as facility staff is that
for a heavily used system, a service contract makes sense - especially
at the university, where it might be difficult to get repair money for
an old system. If you get a good price for a full contract including all
parts and lasers, then I would go for it. Try to fix it for several
years, since it often gets more expensive with every year.

In your case it's about 1000 hrs/year, which is not that much. The
contract has to have a good price in order to definitely pay off (lower
or similar than price for regular laser exchange incl. working hours).

cheers,
Michael


Arvydas Matiukas wrote:

> Hello confocal people,
>  
> I need an advice/recommandations regarding long term (up to 10 years)
> efficient service strategy for Zeiss confocal machines (LSM 510 or similar).
>  
> I have been supervizing LSM510 NLO for three years, and so far my experience
> with (standard) Zeiss service contract was generally OK.
>  
> However basic question is about the long term strategy, and specifically
> my former
> colleagues from Lithuania who are buying a new Zeiss confocal system
> are interested in a long-term optimal service quality/cost ratio. You
> know, they are at
> state university, so after huge initial injection ($1M) it will be quite
> dififcult to
> get any substiantial support (i.e. <$10k/year). Under these circumstances,
> at what age of the confocal system it may be  reasonable to drop (standard)
> Zeiss service contract and switch to on-demand service.
>  
> It would greatly appreciate if experienced confocal people (ay any country,
> especially having older machines, 4-10 year old)
> would comment on cost-efficient service/maintenance strategies, drawbacks of
> dropping Zeiss service contract, and average/potential lifetimes/breaks
> of key
> components of the confocal system. The system is expected to be used
> ~1000hrs/year.
>  
> It is not very urgent issue, and I would appreciate sharing any
> experience/ideas/strategies.
> Maybe this post will inspire exchange of views/ideas useful for many
> confocal people.
>  
>  
> Many thanks,
> Arvydas
>  
> �--------------------------------------------
>  
>  
>  
> Arvydas Matiukas, Ph.D.
> Director of Confocal&Two-Photon Imaging Core Facility
> Department of Pharmacology
> SUNY Upstate Medical University
> 766 Irving Ave., WH 3159
> Syracuse, NY 13210
> tel.: [phone]
> fax: [phone]
> email: [hidden email] <mailto:[hidden email]>