I would like to thank all of the hard working NMR managers, from all over
the world, that took time out from their busy schedules to answer my inquiry
about NMR usage. I received 23 replies of which 15 indicated usage numbers
with very helpful hints and 8 which made very informative suggestions.
Three of the replies indicated that they operate 24 hours a day 7 days a
week (168 hours/week). Some of these were industrial situations using
autosamplers. The remaining respondents reported usages of from 150
hours/week down to 12 hours/week (faculty lost a lot of their funding). The
median was 105 and the average was 103. The number of students and others
using the instrument went from 150 to 6. It appeared that approximately 60
was average. There was little correlation with the number of students using the
instrument and the amount of time used. Some of the smaller groups used lots
of time for long term T1 and non standard nuclei data accumulations.
Many people gave interesting suggestions to encourage off hour usage. The
most popular was to charge significantly less during the off hours. This
seemed to work for some groups but not for other (apparently the students don't
care how much the time cost since it doesn't come out of their pockets).
Another was to assign blocks of time to specific groups. This requires a lot
of managers time and could cause all kinds of conflicts. It seems that if
a student really wants to get his work done he doesn't care when he gets on
the instrument. One person said that the closer the students get to
graduation the more likely they are to take the off hours.
Many people gave suggestions as to increasing through-put. Off line data
processing has now become very affordable with the introduction of data
processing on pc's. Auto samplers were also suggested but these tend to get
expensive.
I hope that the above information can be of some help. I know that now I
have enough information to present to the faculty when questions of nmr
usage come up.
This user group is a great forum for answering questions of this type. Very
often we have no idea as to what is happening out side of our own little
world.
Many Thanks
Les
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Leslie Gelbaum E-mail leslie.gelbaum@oip.gatech.edu
School of Biology Phone 404-894-2295
Georgia Tech Fax 404-853-0048
Atlanta, Georgia 30332
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