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Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
MSL iLab Site

MSL Maintenance Procedures

At MSL we perform—at least—weekly maintenance on all of our systems (this takes place on Monday morning).

Light Microscopes

We perform the following tasks to ensure optimal performance of our light microscopes:

  • Change lamps if they are at or beyond their maximum rated lifespan (300 hours for the Hg lamp on the LSM710 and BX61 Neville, 2000 hours for the xCite bulb on the LSM900).
  • Check and clean objectives.
  • Check and clean eyepieces.
  • Check and clean stages.
  • Verify air table flotation.
  • Perform computer maintenance tasks (virus scans, software updates, purging old data, hard drive checks, etc.).
  • Ensure all consumables (lens paper, immersion oil, ethanol, water, wipes, paper towels, gloves, cotton swabs) are available.

On instruments with motorized stages (Dragonfly Hermione, Andor XD Hagrid, IX81 Luna, LSM900, LSM710, light-sheet Snape):

  • Verify proper movement of stage in both axes.

On instruments used for live-cell imaging (Dragonfly Hermione, Andor XD Hagrid, , IX81, LSM710):

  • Check CO2 levels, water levels in humidifier.

On the LaVision BioTech UtlraMicroscope II:

  • Change DBE.
  • Align all optics.

In addition to these weekly checks we have historical measurements of laser powers on our confocals and light-sheet system, detailed measurements made with beads on some of our high resolution objectives, and can provide tools to perform brightfield and fluorescence flatfielding on any of our systems.

Electron Microscopes

Our staff aligns and calibrates the scanning and transmission electron microscopes weekly, and performs finer adjustments as needed every day.

Insurance and Service Contract Coverage

All of our instruments have insurance against catastrophic damage, and the following systems have premium service contracts with their manufacturers, to ensure any problem is solved quickly for our users, as well as to receive timely updates:

  • Zeiss LSM 900 confocal
  • Zeiss LSM 710 confocal
  • Zeiss SUPRA 25 field emission scanning electron microscope
  • JEOL JEM 1230 transmission electron microscope
  • Dragonfly Hermione spinning disk confocal
  • LaVision BioTech UltraMicroscope II light-sheet
  • Bitplane Imaris image analysis software