[3dem] Fwd: Re: Moving a microscope

[Thorsten Mielke]

Ruben,

I would agree with Wim. We had to move our Polara 2 times to another 
institute about 750 m away due to construction work in our building and 
2 smaller scopes (T12 Spirit, CM100) once into our new rooms. We ordered 
a FEI service engineer to split (e.g. taking the FEG/gun head down) and 
pack the scopes. For the move itself, we ordered a shipping company 
specialized in heavy and delicate items (equipment as well as art!). The 
came well-prepared with lots of special bits and pieces and really knew 
how to lift/move delicate stuff. It took the engineer several days to 
prepare the Polara and  about 1-2 weeks to re-install it (including 
calibrations, X-ray measurements, ..). The transportation itself only 
took one day. As far as I remember the paper work, we asked FEI to 
arrange the full move, so FEI ordered the shipping company, too, and we 
didn't have to bother about insurance. The Polara was under full service 
contract at that time and is still running.

I have to admit that we had severe problems with the Polara about half a 
year later (HT tank, stage, ...) causing substantial downtime. However, 
the move was never an issue for FEI fixing the problems. I can imagine 
that, depending on your service contract, it might be more difficult 
(practically and legally) to deal with potential follow-up problems if 
FEI is not involved somehow in moving the scope.

Best,

Thorsten





-------- Weitergeleitete Nachricht --------
Betreff: 	Re: [3dem] Moving a microscope
Datum: 	Fri, 16 Aug 2019 00:03:16 +0200
Von: 	Wim Hagen <hagen at embl.de>
An: 	3DEM Mailing List <3dem at ncmir.ucsd.edu>



Hi Ruben,

The one thing many people don’t realize is how to prepare a scope for 
transport to prevent damage to critical parts. Way too many contractors 
offer moving stuff, often backed with claims of “we use former FEI 
personnel”, but what most folks don’t know about are the tricky details 
of preparing a scope to be moved, these details only are known properly 
in the TFS factory, even their service procedures don’t describe these 
details.

Horror story:
TF30 Twin with GIF2002, crate somewhat damaged, tip & tell and all shock 
indicators (10G) on the crates were ok. But in the factory we always put 
some tip & tell and shock indicators in some hidden spots on the 
microscope base: those showed that the scope had been dropped and tipped 
big time! Some shipping company employee simply replaced the indicators 
on the crates with fresh ones....
Tip & tell and shock indicators are standard things that every shipping 
company has, you can’t trust them on the outside, so make sure the scope 
itself is tagged with them!

Personally I would heavily heavily heavily push for TFS to prep the 
move, making sure the local TFS service engineers have been 
informed/instructed by the TFS factory how to prep a scope for transport.

If I had to move one of my own systems,I would demand a factory engineer 
to prep the scope. There’s a myth in TEM land to never move a scope but 
it just boils down to how well things are organized and cutting costs 
always is a bad idea.

Best,

Wim


> On 13. Aug 2019, at 22:25, Ruben Diaz <pindusito at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> We are moving a high-end microscope (Titan Halo) from one Institute to 
> another which is about 4km away. We already hired the services of a 
> well-reputed company specialized in this sort of job, and they carry 
> some insurance for the move, but very likely it is not enough in case 
> something goes incredibly bad. My question is if anybody has gone 
> through this process, did you get some extra insurance, and if so, for 
> how much? (replacement cost?) Perhaps more importantly, did something 
> bad happen during the move that ended up needing an insurance claim? 
> (column dropped from a truck or something like that). Any horror 
> histories would be welcome!
>
> Ruben.
>
> _______________________________________________
> 3dem mailing list
> 3dem at ncmir.ucsd.edu
> https://mail.ncmir.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/3dem

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