[RASMB] Lamp Diagnostics

[mitrana at mail.utexas.edu]

Hello Spinners
Our AUC started giving some problems recently. Did a wavelength scan and here's
a summary of the results -

1. Lamp intensity varies at the 5.9 cm position although at the 'sweet spot'
obtained from the lamp alignment this variation is about 9-10%.

2. Sometimes it seems the peaks are cut-off and I get a plateau instead of a
peak with of course a lower intensity count.

3. The peak oscillates 1-2 nm (227-230 nm and 526-528 nm) on successive scans at
a single radial position.

It seems like a monochromator problem to me but I'd like to hear some comments
from experts here. I am particularly worried about the peaks getting cut-off.
Our facility did not renew the service contract this year (I know, extremely
bad idea but too many size exclusion column huggers around) and I'd rather know
the problem instead of being told by the Beckman Service person that it's within
specs while charging $290.00 per hour.

Mitra

-- 
Mitra S. Rana
Graduate Student
Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology
2500 Speedway, UT-Austin
Austin, TX-78712