tecnai version 2.1.5

[Bob Grassucci]

Dear Roman,
         The V7 hardware button you are referring to is a switch which not 
only closes V7/V4 but disables the valves.  If you try to open the valve 
after pressing the button the HT unfortunately shuts down trying to protect 
itself since the valve has been disabled for some reason.  One must press 
this button again to re-enable the valve before you will be able to open 
it.  Unfortunately there is no way to know whether you are disabled or not 
and we have had similar problems when changing cameras and a new user 
accidentally presses the button which on our F20 and Polara are in close 
proximity.  These saftey buttons are in place in case the PC dies and the 
valves need to be shut directly.  There is a similar arrangement with the 
HT as far as I understand but at least that button lights up when it is 
enabled.
         Regards,
         Bob

At 09:46 AM 6/29/2005 +0200, Koning, R.I. \(MCB\) wrote:
>Dear all,
>
>I am sorry to hear about your tip. Thia happening is always the biggest 
>fear of a FEG user (after floodings and fires). I must say that we for 
>safety reasons only open the FEG valve when we look at the specimen. In 
>any other situation the lock is closed.
>
>We experienced major problems and many bugs after upgrading our TECNAI FEG 
>20 software to version 2.1.5. The most important being not to be able to 
>get the negatives exposed in low dose. It appeared that having the plate 
>number counter and/or exposure number in the window of our TUI created 
>major communication problems with the TEM server. This resulted in a 
>multitude of (irreproducable) bugs and mistakes. Getting rid of the plate 
>number counter and exposure number corrected for all of these problems.
>
>Not related to this, it also appeared that the hardware button to close V7 
>(which I normally never use but for educational purposes did once) not 
>only closed V7 but also shut down the HT. Something that a FEI engeneer 
>experienced before.
>
>With kind regards,
>
>Roman
>
>R.I.Koning (Roman) Ph.D.
>Leiden University Medical Center
>Department of Molecular Cell Biology
>Center for Electron Microscopy
>Wassenaarseweg 72 2333 AL
>P.O.Box 9503 2300 RA
>Leiden
>The Netherlands
>tel. (+31) 71 527 6463
>fax. (+31) 71 527 6440
>r.i.koning at lumc.nl
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: owner-tecnai at wadsworth.org [mailto:owner-tecnai at wadsworth.org]On
>Behalf Of Angel M Paredes
>Sent: Tuesday, June 28, 2005 20:40
>To: Bill Tivol
>Cc: microscopy at msa.microscopy.com; tecnai at wadsworth.org; 3dem at ucsd.edu
>Subject: tecnai version 2.1.5
>
>
>Hi all,
>
>Sunday we experienced a rather bad malfunction that people should be aware
>of that destroyed our FEG tip.  On our Polara, the user working with the
>scope decided to remove the MSC to exchange the specimen.  To do this you
>have to vent the airlock.  He pushed the "vent airlock" button.  Since he
>had not closed the column valves, the software I believe was supposed to
>have detected this and closed the column valves for him to protect the
>FEG.  The software unfortunately did not.  What the user did not know was
>that there was an electrical short in valve B that told the software that
>valve B was closed when it was in fact opened.  Instead of telling him to
>close valve B as it should have done, the software detected that valve B
>was already closed and told the user instead to close valve A... which he
>did.  The software then vented the airlock but with valve B opened instead
>of closed, the column was vented and since the software had not closed the
>column valves when the user pushed "vent airlock", the FEG was vented too.
>FEG tip gone.
>
>We are currently using version 2.1.5 of the user interface.  Has anyone
>out there been experiencing any other bugs with 2.1.5?  Thorsten had
>problems with his system rebooting when a log file was full and I went
>through the same thing during a bugcheck the system decided to perform.
>Another bug we've seen is in low dose.  We use diffraction while in
>search.  Every now and again the search mode goes from looking normal to
>looking really strange and becoming very difficult to align.  When I go
>from diffraction back to regular image mode in search, I find that the
>microscope has gone from a magnification of 52,000x to 52x while in
>diffraction and this is the reason why the search mode goes from looking
>okay to looking strange.  FEI's response is that we are not supposed to be
>using diffraction and experiments in the factory have shown that if one
>switches in and out of diffraction too quickly, it causes the mag to
>change.  All I know is that version 2.1.3 did not have this problem.  Are
>there any other problems I should be made aware of?
>
>Thanks,
>angel

********************************
Robert Grassucci
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Wadsworth Center
Empire State Plaza
Albany, NY 12201-0509

bobg at wadsworth.org
Phone: (518)474-5821
Fax:	(518)486-2191