Posted by
George McNamara on
URL: http://confocal-microscopy-list.275.s1.nabble.com/CO2-enrichment-accessories-tp7589882p7589897.html
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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:
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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
>
> *****
>
> 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