Mike, others . . . I can't see any reason why Turbo would be at fault here . . . get rid of the filter. I run three sorters (one is a Vantage SE with Turbo), and none of them have in-line filters. I removed these long ago when I found residual bleach in a filter on one of my Elites. We sterilely filter (0.2 um) all sheath we use in the instruments - - this helps to eliminate noise in the sheath as well as bugs. MAK. -- Mark A. KuKuruga, Managing Director University of Michigan Flow Core 7416 CCGC 0946 (734) 647-3216, fax (734) 936-7376 kukuru@umich.edu >>> Michael Hughes <MHughes@picr.man.ac.uk> 12/07/01 04:46AM >>> Hello all, We have recently upgraded our FACSVantage to an FACSVantage SE with Tubosort. Since we have done this we have been having bacterial contamination in our sterile sorts. When we put a Pall autoclavable filter, supplied by BD on the sheath tank, we have sterile sorts for a few days and then begin to get quite heavy bacterial contamination. We are attempting to run at a sheath pressure of 45 psi and we leave all the sheath and sample line tubes soaking in 70% alcohol overnight. We have rarely had problems when using 11-14psi and changing millipore filters every day before we upgraded. We have heard from another laboratory in the UK via the BD engineer, that they run at about 30 psi and need to re-autoclave the pall filter about every 2 months, otherwise they get sort contamination. Has anyone had similar experiences with the Pall filters and can anyone suggest any reasons for our bacterial contamination? Thanks for any help. Mike Hughes, Manager, Flow Cytometry, Paterson Institute, Manchester
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Jan 05 2003 - 19:01:42 EST