Paul - I have a tale to tell regarding a similar experience. We too purchased from Evergreen only to find that Coherent would not perform service work on laser. However, I was not actually as disappointed with Coherent as I was with Evergreen. Within a year we had power supply problems which required shipping the power supply back to Evergreen as they do not provide service in the field. After waiting for a shipping crate to arrive, then shipping the supply back to Evergreen and waiting for repair and reshipment back to us, the laser was down for some time. Not only was there considerable downtime, but considerable expense in shipping charges. In fact, I think we eventually received a different power supply which I thought was strange since I thought that each head and power supply were calibrated to each other. After another relatively short period of time, the tube "died" due to lack of gas. I was told by Evergreen that the only solution was retubing. This was within 2 years of purchase - far less tube life than any other I-90 I had ever owned. I walked through trouble shooting with Coherent on the telephone which they were very happy to do. We tried to do a manual gas fill which was unsuccessful. It turns out that the tube was fine but that the autofill circuit had been disconnected as was whatever was necessary to do manual fills. This apparently is why I was able to put a different power supply on - the autofill calibration between supply and head was not necessary. Coherent could not work on a laser they did not sell me and Evergreen would not come into the field to work on it. I was between a rock and a hard place. Eventually, I paid to have Coherent come in and bring the tube up to specs. I cannot remember for sure, but I think it cost me the price of a new tube. I now do not have any trouble with Coherent's willingness to work on any of my lasers since they all ultimately came from Coherent (via BD or Cytomation). The lesson I learned - it is not worth the money saved to purchase from a company that will not service in the field. Even though I really liked the people at Evergreen and they were extremely helpful over the phone, I was ultimately frustrated with the process. And some things - like lasers- are too difficult and expensive to ship easily and quickly (no Fed Ex for things like that). We are currently having the same problem with our Miltenyi Automacs - it had to be shipped in for repair resulting in many weeks of down time. I try to avoid these types of situations now. Best wishes, Julie
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