turns out, when you buy used highly specialized electro-pneumatic laboratory equipment that
- was built in 1990
- from designs that date to 1980
- by a company that no longer exists
- and that hasn't been turned on in over a decade
it's kinda tough to get it working again and involves being *extremely* relieved to find that a company still manufactures a part you need, even if it's a 7-week lead time, because how the hell else were we going to replace that broken valve
-F
@Felthry wait, you can't fix highly specialized electro-pneumatic laboratory equipment with duct tape? have you tried? 😉
@noiob actually yes
-F
@noiob that is, yes we tried that and no it didn't work
-F
@Felthry haha, worth a try
luckily expensive lab equipment is one of the few things that people actually expect you to repair, I guess
@noiob not anymore, but in the 90s yeah and in the 80s absolutely
-F
@Felthry I bet they'll try duct tape first, or like, epoxy
@Felthry (and by "around" I mean I've literally constructed coils around electron microscopes to compensate ambient magnetic fields)
@noiob electron microscopes are a different sort of thing
depends on what part fails though. if something in the cooling system fails it might be fixable, if the vacuum chamber itself fails you're probably looking at a new SEM
-F