Posted: Fri May 23, 2008 12:29 am
Will the storage condition before lamp installation influence the lamp energy?
unmgvar wrote:
As you state HW good detector have their optic sealed and protected, but it is not done well in all detectors. this was a procedure that i learned in order to maintaine hitachi detectors. my region being very dusty, we needed to do this every 2-2.5 years per instrument. it does affect the energy of the lamp on the sample because it absorbs and disperses the light.
only changed a mirror once on a very old instrument thou.
In most detectors there is a sealed monochromator but also an inlet mirror and often a quartz window which needs to be changed periodically (every 50,000Hours) Purposely this is left out because solarisation happens and kill this inlet mirror and quartz window. After 10 years a window will let less than 30% of the light go through. I do not recommend washing wirrors, you have far more chances of misaligning and affecting the surface, better to dust off using a CLEAN stream of air. On detectors which are used 24h a day, after many year you also have to change mirrors in the monochromator, I do not recommend the average user to try this, you need to laser align the mirror which I perform. You can monitor the amount of light(energy) much cheaper than buying a new detector.