Dear colleagues Thanks to the six respondents to my question about the longevity of the Cyonics 2201 laser fitted to our Coulter Elite. We will follow up your suggestions. For those who are interested please find below, as promised, though a little late, a summary of the replies. One respondent thought that our 2048 hours over 2.5 years was good compared with his 1500 hours. The remaining 5 respondents, speaking on behalf of 10 instruments thought that we should get much better; up to 7 years or 10,000 hours (same laser on a BD instrument). Suggestions for improving laser longevity essentially all revolved around improving cooling, and included; Clean filters regularly (we do). Turn laser down/off when instrument is not acquiring data. Turn laser off/down before turning the instrument (and cooling fans) off. The actual replies are given below. Cyonics model 2201 usually lasts between five and ten thousand hours on the FACS can/sort/calibur. Ortho Cytorons got half that life span due to inadequate cooling. This laser has a rated output of 40+mW, so running it at 15mW should give a long life if you provide adequate cooling. Also, (if you do not already) turn the laser to standby for about five minutes prior to turning your instrument off to let the laser cool down. In my experience, you have done rather well. I had an air cooled laser that lasted barely 1500 hours (at 60 MW), it was run with a fan in a room with the air conditioning set at 18C. Most suppliers I have talked to do not expect to get more than 1500 hrs from an air cooled laser. We have an air cooled system which maybe slightly different if yours is water cooled. We have the fan system on a separate switch. This laser HeCd has been running at 25-50mW for thousands of hours without a problem. A similar laser came in with our second hand Coulter that had no additional cooling after shut down and had gone down in half the running hours. We always have our laser cooling for at least 15 minutes. I certainly wouldn't turn off the fans any earlier than 10 mins. If you can adapt you electric's it could be well worth doing. It certainly won't harm your laser life. We have our Cyonics laser running since 1995 without any problem...yet.The Elite is installed in a room with air conditioning and a tolerance of plus or minus 1 °C. This as been done mostly, because of the sorting performance for which it is knowned to be influenced by the room temperature viscosity of the sheath, drop delay etc.M.G.Ormerod book Flow Cytometry). We also evacuated the laser heat with the cooling cube oriented through a ventilation duct which exhaust used air out of the building. We certainly have passed by far your 2048 hours of use.To my knowledge all my colleagues (5)operating the Elite for about the same amount of time in this area nobody had replaced the laser ..yet. The Cyonics LASER on our Coulter Elite has lasted a fairly long time. We are on our second LASER, and we purchased our Elite in December of 1990. The only tip I have is to make sure that the air filters on the air system of the LASER is clean. When our first LASER failed in June 1996, my repair man urged me to make sure that I changed and/or cleaned the air filter. In my case, it is a nylon stocking (which reminds me, I need to check it soon. So, we've had good longevity, the last room my Elite was in had high humidity, and the air conditioning was not very good (high humidity and about 10 degree shifts in temperature whenever the A/C came on/off during the day. Anyway, I hope that helps Regarding tube life of CYONICS lasers, a FACScan I bought in 2/94 (located in CH) is still running more than 7 years later. The lab is air conditioned, kept very cool and the FACScan is next to the air conditioning vent. The hot air from the laser is directed back into the air conditioning unit, so cool air is constantly pulled through the cytometer and laser. In my current lab in the USA, the CYONICS laser is directly vented to the room ventilation system. This FACScan was manufactured in 1994 as well. I had a heat dissipation chimney with ventilation fan mounted to the back of the FACScan. When the power to the FACScan is turned on, the auxiliary cooling fan is turned on to draw additional air through the laser to have it run cooler and cool down faster when the instrument is turned off. Based on n=2, I'll conclude that keeping the ambient temperature and the laser cooler prolongs its life. When the instrument will not be used for more than 30-45 minutes, I have my users turn it off. I also try to schedule users so that sample acquisition can be "piggy-backed", running one after the other to lessen the likelihood of the instrument being switched ON/OFF more than a few times during the course of the day. Some people feel the instrument should be left on over the course of the entire day to prolong tube life, but with turning it off several times in a day and having both tubes still running after 7 years, it doesn't seem to support that school of thought any more than turning it off when not be used for more than 30 minutes. Sincere thanks again to those who took the time to reply David R Lloyd MMedSc CBiol MIBiol Research Associate School of Chemical Engineering University of Birmingham Edgbaston Birmingham B15 2TT England t; +44 (0)121 414 5357 e; D.R.Lloyd@bham.ac.uk http://www.bham.ac.uk/ChemEng/actg/hbhome.htm
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