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Marcia and others who are interested,
At The Scripps Research Institute, our dye laser (a Coherent 599 with rhodamine 6G
as the dye) has been working very well for the past three years with minimal
maintenance. We have had to change the dye about once per year. The dye laser is run
approximately 20-30 hours per week. It is necessary to slightly tweek the beast
each day before using it to obtain a good mode and satisfactory power (we run
ours at ~200mW on a Facstar Plus), and I agree with other comments about power
fluctuation with temperature changes. I let the system (the pump
laser - a 5W innova 90 run at ~2.5W - and the dye head) warm up for 2 hours
before touching it. This warmup period is a little extreme, but it saves me from
having to retweek the dye box in the middle of an experiment. I also find that
optimization of the pump laser (simply tweeking the horizontal and vertical controls
of the high reflector) on a daily basis is very helpful.
Moreover, our dye laser has been a real workhorse. It is a little bit tricky to
learn the alignment of the dye box and to troubleshoot on days when it does not
lase, but (in the local vernacular) once you have the hang of it, it's no big deal.
Tom Knapp
Flow Cytometry Core Facility
The Scripps Research Institute
tknapp@facs.scripps.edu
www http://facs.scripps.edu/
phone
(619) 554-8396,554-8286
p.s. I have CC'd to the cytometry bulliten board. If this message does not reach them,
could you please foreward it. Thanks, Tom.
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