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to move the stage with some combination of insert and objective that will damage it. Tere are too many variables at play. To be hon- est, students don’t read instructions or SOP documents, no mat- ter how clear and simple they are. Even if they sign it! I tried that once and it only lasted for 3 months before I gave up. I really think it’s all about the initial training and how much emphasis you put on the issue, and then, over the first few times new students start working alone, you stand over their shoulders and reemphasize the importance and make sure they are working correctly. Scheduling soſtware that cannot be deleted may help (once a scheduled session starts, they can no longer delete the record), meaning they know that if they do something, you will know who did it. But not even that helps if you can’t do anything about it even if you KNOW who did the damage. Avi Javob avijacob@gmail.com


Tanks, Avi for sharing your experience. I would add that


my core mostly serves postdocs and grad students, but as you mentioned the biggest problem is with undergrads, especially ones who just want to have confocal skills listed in their CV/resume. I would also say that the “tolerance of students breaking equipment” depends on a country’s cultural environment. In the USA, it is quite high, while in China it is very low. Tere, students are not allowed to operate expensive equipment and can only watch a technician, which is another solution for equipment protection. Arvydas Matiuka matiukaa@upstate.edu


On our Nikon Ti-E I created a macro that lowers the lenses


fully and centers the XY-stage. Tis runs on soſtware shutdown, and I think also on startup, in case someone uses the microscope without soſtware. Scientists are also instructed to run the macro before changing inserts. Tus, we have prevented lens crashing for quite a few years. Stephen H. Cody stephenhcody@gmail.com


With changing times, a large segment of students and scien-


tists have evolved into using visual cues. I found an image on the microscopy memes twitter handle and stuck it on one of our micro- scopes (link below) to avoid issues of users adding oil by mistake to the 20x air objective (https://ibb.co/1MHqcB0). Something that was a weekly incident, and what words in an email couldn’t achieve, this meme has accomplished. Two months and incident-free. Your post made me think that perhaps, along with pretty pictures, some of the pics of microscope damage should also be posted in the core facility. Gaurav Joshi gauravnjoshi@gmail.com


In the labs I’ve worked in, we’ve lost a few lenses due to crashes,


and only in one case was the person who did the damage identified. Most of the lenses were oil immersion high NA lenses on inverted systems that were smashed into the stage, but the first generation of Olympus infinity corrected lenses were also not well protected against over-oiling and other spills. We also lost a water-dipping lens on an upright due to a careless user. Tree years ago, we got a Nikon spinning disk system and within a few weeks the metal on the lenses was gouged by the stage. Fortunately, none of the glass was damaged. Training did include a brief discussion of lens safety, but clearly not enough. I put macros in the soſtware to drop the lenses and clear the XY positions on soſtware startup and shutdown and all users had to be retrained. Since then, no additional scratches. Here are some attitudes and practices I have found. Tere is an expectation that we train as many people as possible as fast as possible. Tere is so much to learn in a training session that people cannot absorb it all. Tere is a culture that safety measures impede research. Biologists oſten have an attitude that machines are beyond them. Some may


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be talented biologists but have little aptitude for working with ma- chines. I was taught physics in high school by a teacher who wanted us to understand phenomena experientially and viscerally. (And I had elementary school teachers who did all sorts of cool things with us, like build a walk-in camera obscura out of a refrigerator box and try all different types of lenses and pinhole sizes.) I get the feeling most people who walk into the microscope lab don’t understand ba- sic physics. Not enough effort and attention are put into repeated use to become truly familiar with the instrument. Microscopes are just simple tools to get pictures. Tey shouldn’t be so difficult. You’re making me consider that, before we allow anyone to use the new Stellaris arriving in a few weeks, we need to make everyone read a microscope safety sheet and test them on it. Perhaps something like a picture of a lens and explain the two most important points. 1.) No crashes. 2.) No spills. Spills are important because our Zeiss 710 NLO was nearly destroyed by spills despite the plastic spill catcher covering the nosepiece, silicon caps and scrunchies around the lenses. Michael Cammer michael.cammer@med.nyu.edu


Everything the others already said (especially the bit about


saving money), plus some additional thoughts of my own. – When moving the stage around, not only the objective in the beam path is in danger, but also the two next to it. We try to make our users aware of that problem.


– On a DMi8 a particular time of danger is when the stage is initial- ized and moves around automatically. We have configured our sys- tems such that this happens not when the microscope is switched on, but only aſter starting the soſtware (LASX; in the hardware configurator under stage). A pop-up screen will ask the user “do you want to initialize the stage now” or something like that, so the user must make an active choice and can check that nothing is in the way.


– Usually, the objective turret is automatically moved to the lower- most position during stage initialization (inverted DMi8), which is obviously an excellent idea. However, this does not work if the turret is not snapped into one of the objective positions. Imagine somebody wiping the oil off the metal parts and pushing the objec- tive slightly out of position. Ten, for the next user, initialization starts without the turret going down first. We learned because a user was coming to us when the stage insert was pushed up dur- ing initialization. We now ask users to switch to 5x or 10x with the touchpad before starting the soſtware. Switching only works if the turret is snapped in.


– To avoid training of undergrad users that are not really interested in using the instrument aſter an introduction, we put a €200 fee on the training (converted into a prepaid account that must be used within 3 months). Tat seems to have helped a lot. In cases where it doesn’t, at least we have the money. Tis helps to keep the motiva- tion up in my team.


– During 1:1 training, we very much make the point that there are two (and only two) things where a user is in real danger of acci- dentally causing expensive repairs: hitting the objectives with the stage and overexposing the HyDs (detectors on the SP8 system). My impression is that most people realize that these two issues are important. I am trying to raise awareness and responsibility, but not to scare them. (Note: there are more points when liquid me- dium is involved and for other cases. Also, too much oil can be a problem. But giving a (small) number of “most important issues” seems to help).


– We teach our users not to put oil on the objective, but on the slide (yes, also on the inverted, before putting it on the stage), and to use a small amount. When having many slides, usually only every second


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