After a bunch of back and forth with tech support, and arriving at the point where they recommended a service call (read: $$$$) I decided to give the instrument one more round of diagnostics. I fiddled with a bunch of settings that should have no effect (and didn’t, which I suppose is reassuring). I was…
FTIR out of service
The FTIR has been a little hit-and-miss lately with operation, and the intermittent nature of the problem has prevented Thermo from offering any concrete solutions. Today we have a solid symptom: the interferometer is not moving under software control; thus, no data can be acquired, and the instrument cannot even align its own optics. Consequently,…
New bulk storage on GCMS
The QP-2020 GCMS was equipped with two hard drives in a RAID1 configuration (i.e., mirrored) at the time it was installed. One of those two drives failed, which was not the end of the world…but had the other one also failed, it would have been quite problematic. This morning a new solid state drive was…
Card reader for room 140 not working
The card reader outside room 140 appears to have lost its mind; it is no longer responding to card swipes. A work order has been submitted and hopefully the repair will be prompt. If you need to get into room 140, you should be able to enter via room 139. UPDATE: the issue was resolved…
FTIR behaving (but…)
The FTIR has been functioning properly lately; lamentably, this is not because of anything we have consciously done. We are still waiting for a response to our tech support request with Thermo and hope to have some definitive steps to take when the problem recurs. Please let us know if you run into problems. I…
FTIR misbehaving
Our FTIR – normally a well-behaved and very much used instrument – is throwing a timeout error during analyses. There appears to be an issue with the optical bench of the instrument, one which we have been unable to resolve independently; we are waiting for technical support from the manufacturer. (Thermo, are you listening?) In…
DSC, CHN analyzer indefinitely out of service due to water damage
The theme song for today is an old classic; play this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZUE4_PtOk0 in the background while you read the rest of this post. A water leak on an upper floor caused a rainstorm on the floors below, including in the Shared Instrument Lab. The DSC and the CHN analyzer were impacted – quite literally –…
Cary 50 has been replaced
The Cary 50 UV-vis spectrometer has been out of service due to computer issues; the age of the system and the proprietary interface card make it quite difficult to support the instrument on modern computer hardware. The good news is that we’ve been able to replace the Cary 50 with a Cary 60 spectrometer! The…
Lab closure due to planned power outage
A campus power outage planned for Wednesday June 19th will impact Schrenk Hall; because the 19th is a university holiday, the Shared Instrument Lab will be closed from 4pm on Tuesday the 18th through 11am on Thursday the 20th, and all instruments will be shut down during that time. Neither the lab nor any of…
Computer upgrades in process
Over the next couple of weeks, the instrument host computers in the Shared Instrument Lab will be receiving upgrades. Consequently, there will be times when one or more of the instruments will not be available. Please check the instrument calendar in advance of your instrument need to be sure that the instrument you wish to…