 |
 |
 |
 |
The laser is rated at 2.5 Watts in all lines visible and a Coherent field
engineer has verified it's output for us. Like all Coherent lasers I've
seen it has no trouble exceeding specifications; ours produced 1.17W at
488nm with the aperture open and 570mW at 488nm in TEM00 mode with the
aperture at 3. It produced 91mW in all lines UV with the aperture open and
we've been running it at 70mW at aperture 14 for two years now with no
problems.
It is a little difficult to read the power output on the scale provided.
Our Coherent field engineer used a separate power meter to measure it's
output and we translated this to the numerical scale provided on the laser
power meter. A separate power meter would be nice to have. It also is not
quite as robust thermally as the newer INNOVA 300 series argon lasers. All
this means is that it's a good idea to let the laser warm up to operating
temperature before tweaking and using for flow. I usually peak the laser
at the output I'll be using as well.
The Spectrum comes with an 18 month or 2000 hour warranty and we've never
had a problem so far. It is a lot harder to go back and forth from visible
to UV than an argon laser, but once in UV it has been fine for us. I was
hoping to get a near UV line around 407 or 413 for Aequorea GFP
fluorescence but you would probably be better off with a krypton laser for
this (see Cytometry 21:309-317, 1995, Ropp et al). Still, the yellow line
at 568 should be good for Cy3 and the red line at 647 good for Cy5 or APC.
We'll be tryng these soon.
Hope this helps. Hank
>G'day..
>I was wondering if anyone had any experience using the Coherent Spectrum
>Laser (or any other "mixed-gas" laser) for flow cytometry.
>Any feedback anyone can give would be much appreciated.
>Thanks in advance...
>Mark Gauci.
>Mark Gauci
>Optoelectronic Engineer
>Centre for Lasers and Applications
>Macquarie University, Sydney
>NSW 2109.
>Phone: +61 2 9850 8111
>Fax: +61 2 9850 8983
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hank Pletcher (pletcher@mail.med.upenn.edu)
University of Pennsylvania Cancer Center
Flow Cytometry and Cell Sorter Shared Resource
Voice: 215-898-3528 Fax: 215-898-4227
|
|
|
|