Thank you to all who sent me email regarding this. I now have a new head and it hasn't been damaged. My field engineer did two things, he installed a new head and also replaced the high voltage board, deep in the card cage. We don't know if the board helped to cause our problem yet, but what we do know is what I was seeing was the result of electrolysis. Apparently, electric charge from the deflection plates was traveling up the stream and causing the stainless steel to deplate. This can be avoided, I've learned, by making sure that the macrosort head platform appears to be flat, or level before putting the nozzle on. Then put the nozzle on and adjust it's trajectory with the "nozzle tool". Once you've got it into the catcher and it looks good, side to side and front to back, turn on the plates and walk the stream into the catcher if it moved out, with the center stream control knob. Go and do the normal alignment stuff and tweek theta and alpha if you need to move the stream in the laser spot to get more signal. My situation was repeated by another lab and a head was damaged in less than a day. The lab purposefully aimed the stream at a plate, max-ed the charge voltage and ended up with exactly what happened to my lab, but a lot quicker. To answer a question regarding the name of the head, yes it is called Macrosort and it does ship with a 70um and a 400um nozzle and it is the head that Turbo sort machines use. Thanks again to all concerned, Lora W. Barsky Childrens Hospital Los Angeles 4650 Sunset Blvd. Mail Stop #62 Los Angeles, CA 90027 323-669-5935 PHONE 323-660-1904 FAX
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