[3dem] Film magazine in the FEI Titan microscope
Joaquin Ortega
ortegaj at mcmaster.ca
Fri Sep 26 12:06:37 PDT 2008
Dear 3DEM community,
We recently got our FEI Titan microscope installed. Yesterday, we put
the film magazine in the microscope for the first time and encounter
the problem that the microscope was not able to reach enough vacuum to
be operational. After 4 hours wait the vacuum system quit and vented
the projection camera.
Thinking that the film may be still a bit wet (after 2 days in the
desiccator!), we put an empty magazine with no film on it and also in
this case the microscope did not recover the vacuum either. When we
removed the film magazine from the projection camera the microscope
reached operational vacuum in 30 minutes.
We also tried to put only either the upper or lower part of the
magazine inside the projection chamber to test whether the magazine
may be creating a leak in the piston that drives the cassette plate in
and out of the screen. In all these cases the microscope did not
recover vacuum.
I was wondering whether any of the Titan or FEI microscopes users in
the community encounter a similar problem and have any suggestion on
how to solve the issue.
Thanks for your help
Joaquin Ortega. Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
1200 Main Street West
Health Sciences Centre. Room 4H24
Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences
McMaster University
Hamilton. ON Canada L8N3Z5
phone: 905-525 9140 x22703.
fax: 905-522 9033.
e-mail: ortegaj at mcmaster.ca
More information about the 3dem
mailing list