Posted by
Zac Arrac Atelaz on
URL: http://confocal-microscopy-list.275.s1.nabble.com/Oil-inside-lenses-tp7580369p7580382.html
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Dear Claire:
There are a few important high lights that I would like to share with you, making a short review of what I have personally observed over the years:
1. Solvents used: Old lenses were cleaned every now and then with acetone or xilol or alcohol or ether or mixtures of those. Nowadays objectives have plastic thin film coverings almost everywhere, so this is something that can stand only ether and/or alcohol, usually in a 2:8 proportion works perfectly fine, all of the others destroy important part of the lenses.
2. Physical force: Installing and deinstalling lenses is now a tricky business. If you never move them, you can get your lenses welded to the frame, I have seen this more frecuently in systems using perfusion while capturing, some drops always fall :D. But when you screw and unscrew if your lens has mobile parts those might be broken or loosen.
3. Brand design: Is very noticeable for me that you can see people talking about this trouble from Zeiss, Leica and Nikon, personally I work with Olympus, and this is not something that happens so often, the only time we have had oil inside one lenses in more than 7 years of continum use it has been because the seals where broken physically not by mistake, price was fair to save a very special objective, but all of the others objectives, even after several hits with the stage have survived well, even putting oil in the 10x (DRY) has no real immediate effect.
4. Mistakes and frustration: Even though we all would love a higher ordered world for everyone, the reality is that work is still on its way to achieve even half of that, so the systems, very often find their way between the student and the PhD degree, which is why we should make a shamanic cleaning every now and then to the site to expell frustration from previous experiments and allow a neutral energy site for next user :D Not easy but a must indeed
5. Business: after all major manufacturers want your money, ¡that is a fact!
Best Regards
Gabriel OH
> Date: Tue, 28 May 2013 07:23:53 -0400
> From:
[hidden email]
> Subject: Re: Oil inside lenses.
> To:
[hidden email]
>
> *****
> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
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>
> Saw that with the same Zeiss lens. Oil was clearly getting through the cement seal. That lens was also fairly well cared for, so I have to guess that those models may be more sensitive to minor insults like scraping the stage (which I do not know that it ever did, but with lots of use...) or being overfocused up into a fixed slide.
>
> Cheers,
>
> TF
>
> Timothy Feinstein, Ph.D.
> Visiting Research Associate
> Laboratory for GPCR Biology
> Dept. of Pharmacology & Chemical Biology
> University of Pittsburgh, School of Medicine
> BST W1301, 200 Lothrop St.
> Pittsburgh, PA 15261
>
> On May 27, 2013, at 7:37 PM, "Claire Brown, Dr." <
[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> > *****
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> >
> > We are relatively routinely seeing oil inside of our Zeiss 63x oil immersion lenses. You end up with a bead of oil inside that acts as a lens itself and the lens is unusable.
> >
> > As far as we can tell, it usually happens after prolonged use over many years. We are at a point now where our lenses are "old" and Zeiss cannot repair them because the parts are no longer available. It costs us $6-8,000 to replace them. With 13 microscopes we have one lens failing every 6-12 months or so. I can't afford to keep replacing these lenses and with this becoming a "routine" occurrence I want to seek out advice about why this might be happening. Our users are well trained and I don't think it is neglect by them. I think this is due to routine use.
> >
> > I have two questions:
> >
> >
> > 1) "Is there a defect in how these lenses are made?"
> >
> > For example, perhaps the seals on the front lenses degrade over time - we inspect our lenses regularly and many that have had oil inside have no obvious damage by visual inspection. Maybe they need to be resealed every year or two, maybe an internal seal degrades over time? Preventative maintenance of these lenses or a change in how they are manufactured would certainly cost less than $8,000 I would think.
> >
> >
> >
> > 2) "Do people have a similar problem with oil immersion lenses from the other major manufacturers?"
> >
> > I look forward to some input here.
> >
> > Sincerely,
> >
> > Claire
> >
> > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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> > Claire M. Brown, PhD - McGill University - Assistant Professor, Physiology - Life Sciences Complex Imaging Facility Director
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