[3dem] damage after unloading and reloading grid

[Morgan, David Gene]

Hi,

We just noticed that when our Talos Arctica unloads and reloads a grid, significant damage (for example, the cracking of the carbon layer in a Quantifoil grid) can happen.  I have lots of examples of this that I can share if people are interested, but here is one comparison:

[cid:4e97a4b2-f7bb-4c3a-a9f4-9e939aca1e67]

In the image above, it does not appear that there is any damage in the image on the left.  However, in other examples, there does appear to be (for example) a minor crack that becomes massive after reloading.

I cannot at this time estimate the amount of damage that might be "new" versus propagation of some sort of previous flaw, and it is entirely possible that much of what we see is propagation of existing flaws.  However, I can also say that we have at least one pair of higher resolution images that support the idea that such damage is not always simply a continuation of a prior problem.

Has anyone else seen this behavior, and if so, is there anything that can be done about it?  For example, is this a problem with the amount of force applied to the grids during the transfers, and if so, can this be adjusted in any way?

Thanks for any input you might have.

--
    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)
      https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://iubemcenter.indiana.edu__;!!Mih3wA!GuEQmVeSMRZSyDp2o5vYCarTEuBLhAzZ5uC_kvp4McQ3fZidveSaSoa6r6IRoF15aqmr14UbdQHoT2RB0KJTlFk$ 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.ncmir.ucsd.edu/pipermail/3dem/attachments/20230323/25932706/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: comparison_001.png
Type: image/png
Size: 658507 bytes
Desc: comparison_001.png
URL: <http://mail.ncmir.ucsd.edu/pipermail/3dem/attachments/20230323/25932706/attachment-0001.png>