Dear Joseph Vaughn,
Unfortunately we had a similar experience with our Gemini 2300 magnet here
at Stony Brook that is similar in style and vintage to yours. Ours quenched
several times. Our first out of warrantee quench was resolved by a 3rd
party NMR magnet company for a fraction of the Varian cost but it seems
that they will no longer provide that service for any cost. Other 3rd party
NMR companies have also adopted the Varian pricing model for their services
or at least they had when we approached them for quotes. In the end, based
on our experience, trouble shooting for possible magnet damage and bringing
up the magnet yourself may not be straight forward or any more cost
effective for you even providing that you could get someone to rent you the
power supply and the appropriate magnet lead hardware to do the job. There
may also be personal safety risks and quality assurance risks involved
depending on your experience. Our magnet developed a progressively
unfortunate quench history with each of 3 quenches that occurred with
diminished time spans between each quench so it was not reasonable to
reenergize the 3rd quench. Others may have more positive histories and
suggestions but there are rumors out there of other quench histories
similar to ours with that magnet vintage. We resolved our problem when we
could replaced the magnet with a standard long hold Oxford 300 MHz magnet
as part of another whole system purchase. For their part, Varian was very
helpful in several respects during the replacement purchase.
Joseph wrote:
> Colleagues
>
> Our Mercury 300 R2D2 magnet just quenched. Have any of you managed to
> re-energize such a magnet yourself? Is there a dependable company less
> expensive than Varian, which is equipped and able to do this job?
>
> Thanks in advance for any info.
>
> Dr. Joseph Vaughn
> Associate Director, NMR Facility
> Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
> Florida State University
> Tallahassee, FL 32306-4390
> Phone 850-644-3334
> Fax 850-644-8281
> email vaughn_at_chemmail.chem.fsu.edu
> http://www.chem.fsu.edu/faculty/vaughn.htm
--
Francis Picart
NMR Coordinator
Room 507
Department of Chemistry
State University of New York at Stony Brook
Stony Brook, New York 11794-3400
(631)632-7991
francis_at_anmf.chem.sunysb.edu
Received on Wed Dec 04 2002 - 13:23:32 MST