[3dem] Artica/Krios question

[Mark Ebrahim]

Hi David,

This is a problem, that most, if not all Talos systems face at some point. Some systems are more severe than others. While it is true that you would get the same error if your chiller were to "blip", that is likely not happening and there is probably nothing wrong with your chiller.

The issue comes from some design flaw in the Talos optics boards which were a complete revamp from the Tecnai systems. On our Arctica at Rockefeller we had the same exact issue and it would manifest in the middle of the night during automated data collection- quite annoying.

We went through 3-4 different optics boards until the problem went away.

I believe FEI went through several iterations of "patches" to fix this issue. Since our issue was fixed by getting the right hardware I never installed any of these patches and I refuse to upgrade our software since we're in a state where everything works. I have not had the problem for several years. I can't say with certainty what the official FEI solution is. They may have a patch that works which could be installed by simply updating your software to the latest version (seemingly simple enough), or perhaps all the boards being manufactured now are free of this defect.

You should share this information with your service engineer and ask him to open a TRF so he can get support from the next tier of engineers or from the factory in Holland. FEI knows about this issue and there should be a solution.

Hope this was helpful.

Best,
Mark


________________________________
Mark Ebrahim

Senior Staff Scientist

Cryo Electron Microscopy Resource Center (CEMRC)

The Rockefeller University
1230 York Avenue
New York, NY 10065
________________________________
From: 3dem <3dem-bounces at ncmir.ucsd.edu> on behalf of Morgan, David Gene <dagmorga at indiana.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, June 17, 2020 5:49 PM
To: 3dem at ncmir.ucsd.edu <3dem at ncmir.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [3dem] Artica/Krios question


Hi,


    We have a chronic problem with our Talos Artica sending out "optics board degraded" error messages.  There is an easy reset for this, except that at least for our system, the Falcon camera can't be used after resetting the optics board unless one also does a microscope server reboot.  Which my engineer says means I need to shut down and restart the FEG.  So it's not an easy fix.


    This seems to happen once every few weeks, maybe once per month.  Except that yesterday, it happened three times within about two hours.  [I reset the optics but didn't use the Falcon, for those of you wondering how I could restart the FEG that quickly... ]  It didn't happen today at all, so the error really seems to be happening randomly.


    My engineer says that the most likely cause of this is interruptions to the chilled water supply, but I have not been able to identify any sort of problem with flow, chilling, etc.  Has anyone else seen similar chronic issues with this error?


    Thanks for any advice you can offer.


--
    politics is more difficult than physics.
                                             A. Einstein

            David Gene Morgan
        Electron Microscopy Center
             047E Simon Hall
             IU Bloomington
          812 856 1457 (office)
          812 856 3221 (3200)
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