[lm-announce] PLEASE READ: oil on microscopes

[Samuel Swift]

Dear All,

We are having serious problems with excess immersion oil working its way into the body of the microscopes and coating the dichroic mirrors.  This causes a significant reduction in intensity and some very nasty imaging artefacts.  This is caused by people putting too much oil on the lens in the first place (e.g. During time lapse imaging) or from not cleaning the lens thoroughly after use.  This is now so frequent that the microscopes are getting dirty faster than we can clean them.

To help combat the problem, we are in the process of putting rubber dams on the microscope lenses to try to reduce the oil that drips into the microscope, but this is nowhere near as effective as proper application of immersion oil in the first place.  Over the fortnight weeks we will be popping in on everybody's microscope sessions to remind you how much oil to use, how frequently to reapply oil and how to clean the lens properly.  We will also show you the symptoms of a dirty microscope so that you can come and tell us if there is a problem.  For those of you doing timelapse, we also have a few tips on how to keep the oil where it's supposed to be.  Please don't be offended by this, it's simply the case that we all need to work together to put this right.

Many thanks,
Sam



The University of Dundee is a registered Scottish Charity, No: SC015096
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