As promised, here is the summary of responses I received in regard to my
request for feedback ('split personality') on the splitting up of the
NMR facility here at the University of South Carolina in order to make
one instrument at least temporarily conveniently located for the
synthetic chemists.
The general consensus seems to be that it is more work but not a fatal
step. Also there was not much of a feeling that location in the
basement was that important. At last! a room with a view.
Jeff
Dr. J.H. Simpson "Jeff" jsimpson@science.psc.sc.edu
Director of NMR Services 803-777-2088 ofc
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry 803-777-9521 fax
University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208 USA
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>From rshoe@wwitch.unl.edu
I might be in a similar situation someday. Our Biochem Dept. is in
another bldg. Their bldg is about 7-8 blocks away, so it could be a
bad situation. I just hope that, if they decide to buy NMR equipment,
they take care if it themselves.
The only comment I have is that the NMR lab doesn't _have_ to be in
the basement. 5 of my 6 instruments are on the 8th floor of an 8.5
floor bldg. The other one is on 4th floor. We have VERY little
problem w/ floor vibrations and the like.
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>From cdr@lamar.ColoState.EDU
Jeff, I have nothing quite so severe (or potentially catastrophic) in my
Department but there are similar elements as you will see. Although the
arrangement is not ideal from my perspective it is still quite workable
and, overall, probably the best solution for all.
Basically, I have NMRs on four floors of my building. They serve different
purposes and some little thought was given to their placement. Our third
floor serves the organic synthesis group and they have one (soon to be two)
NMRs. For historical reasons, my 500 is on the second floor. Another
instrument is located on the 1st floor next to the undergraduate labs
(which it serves). Finally, we have several multi-purpose NMRs in the
main, basement laboratory (which also houses the mass spectrometers,
computer lab, epr, etc.).
We don't have any anti-vibration equipment on the upper floors except for
the 500 NMR. Never have a problem. Basically, our NMRs outside the main
lab (cept the 500) are in some pretty dire labs. They work great. Now,
they aren't being used to do difference spectroscopy (inverse, noe, etc.)
but basic direct detection. I'll grant that more complicated experiments
might prove their ruin.
>(1) make routine maintenance more of a hassle for those performing it.
in practice, a problem but no more than an extra hour or two.
>(2) make troubleshooting (e.g. board swapping) of the isolated NMR more
> difficult.
see above.
>(3) make training of new users more time-consuming.
we train in the main facility, only!
>(4) make user supervision by the NMR staff virtually non-existent.
True. We have our number posted all over *and* we don't do much terribly
complicated (see above) outside of the main basement facility (or 500 lab).
>(5) isolate this NMR from the others (currently all are interfaced with
> fiber optic cable), but the new site will be too far away.
what kind of nmrs are these? you are fortunate? to have fiber. We use
ethernet, zznet, nmrnet, nmrlink, etc. None of this is a problem for
remote access.
>This action may also:
>(6) result in major damage because a user may run amok unsupervised.
can't comment since our unsupervised systems are pretty much brain dead.
>(7) prevent the reunification of the NMR facility when the rest of the
> facility is moved to the new site.
no doubt.
>(8) prevent the facility from ever being moved, due to a lack of
> motivation on the part of the faculty. That is, the person doing
> routine maintenance may have to walk to the other building every
> morning for the rest of his or her career.
yea, that could happen. Unless the *faculty* are inconvenienced there will
be little incentive to move the facility. It isn't clear that having the
grads inconvenience will help much.
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>From lcary@chem.unr.edu
You forgot to mention that all facilities will cost more than
anticipated!! With the limited funds (ph1), I forsee trouble. I would bet
that NMR part will get screwed if (when) funds get short. Good Luck, Lew
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>From karenann@unm.edu
You may hear this story twice, since people at Iowa State are on this list.
In 1990, when I arrived, chem had 4 NMRs and Biochem had 1. Instrument
services was in the basement, with 3 NMRs, mas spec, Xray. The 4th NMR
was our "walk-on" and it was on 2nd floor (on vibration mounts). That
room also housed IR, UV-Vis, and some computers for NMR processing. I
admit that I did not walk up to 2nd floor very often,(unless there was
a problem) although the other NMR person did check at least once a
day. the instrument was very unsupervised. The B&B NMR was on the 1st
floor (vibration mounts). Again, I didn't check on it much, but Dave did.
Certainly the 2nd floor instrument suffered from lack of attention- we
really only knew if there was a problem if a student told us. Some
didn't- they just told their professor.
In Dec91/Jan 92 (I think) B&B's new building opened. There was a lab in
the basement for the NMR. We paid Varian an outragous sum of money to
move the NMR, did most of the work ourselves, and when something did
break, Varian wouldn't fix it. (More detaiils upon request.) All of
your assumptions about the problems of parts, boards, scopes, fills,
supervision, are true. We had few problems with people running amok- but
the instrument is used by only a few research groups. Inconvient, _YES_,
fatal, _no_.
In fall of 94, Instrument Servies moved to first floor of a newly
renovated wing, (mass pec, x-ray, and 3 NMRs). We also sold the NMR on
2nd floor and bought a new one for 1st floor. It was much nicer - since
we were around when freshly ?trained? students attempted to run we could
correct their technique if necessary. When I left this fall, Instrument
Services stopped taking care of B&B's NMR. So, they now have 4 NMRs in
2 adjacent rooms (none on vibration mounts), and no traveling to another
building.
Possible suggestion: IF they move 1 NMR, demand (OK, request) that a TA
position be funded. This person could hang out in the lab for a few
hours a day and answer questions, supervise use, let you know when
something goes wrong, etc.
If at all possible, put the cost of moving the instruments in the
building cost- that is what B&B did and why we had Varian move the
system (magnet warm and packed for shipping). When we moved to first
floor, we did everything ourselves (magnets cold but de-energized).
The view out the first floor is bound to be nicer than the basement. Put
vibration mounts in the building cost as well. You may not need them,
but it's nice to have the option.
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>From tobias@aa.wl.com Wed Nov 15 16:33:05 1995
I hope this helps. I had a similar experience except the time period
before consilidation was much shorter(about 5 months).
I just started to work at Parke-Davis in Ann Arbor on September 9, 1992.
I was replacing someone who was already gone. My responsibility was
to supervise the NMR service/support area for the chemistry discovery
effort at Parke-Davis. At the time there was only a co-op working
in the nmr service area(for 3 months) to make sure the nightly samples(~50)
ran which were made up by hand. The co-op also was only in this country
about 1 year(from Romania), spoke little english, very poor communication,
never saw a computer before and did not know anything about nmr. The
nmr used for routine service was a AM250(not exactly user friendly).
Anyway I now joined the company, and I had never used a bruker before.
The closet I came to was using Nicolet 1080, 1180 etc. My experience
was heavily Varian. There was also a XL-300 and Gemini-200 that immediately
came under my care. Sorry about all these details but I thought some
background would give you a better idea of what I went through.
Parke-Davis was building a new chemistry building and the whole
chemistry department was going to move to this building
(including the nmr's). Since the building was behind schedule,
someone(not me) decided to move me in with the newly purchased
Unity 400. The 400 arrived on October 1. Consequently the 400 and me
moved into the new building. There was no ceilings, no offices yet,
lab benches were still be installed, no phones... Due you get the picture.
It seems my little $400K instruments was pretty insignificant. Well now
I am cut off from the rest of Parke-Davis. I got them to give me
a cellular phone. The 400 was brought up to field by October 7.
They(I do not know who) would force the construction people too speed
up their work. So now I had to run back and forth to make sure
that everything was going okay, especially since know could contact me.
The cellular phone only worked near the outside windows and not near
the 400 installation. I also had to go outside since
the buildings were not connected yet. It was only about a 1/4 mile, but
michigan gets a little cold in november and december, and it was a
real pain in the ... Anyway I kept thinking it can only get better.
My days at worked turned into 13 hour days which was not well received
at home. Around the december the 200 and 300 were moved over and
the other people. I might add it was getting a little lonely, so it
was at least a welcome sight to see some faces. The service nmr was still
in the old building. By January, half of the samples were generated in
the new building and half were in the old building. They(again I do not
know who) did not want to move the service nmr to the new building until
all the chemist who submit samples for that system are in the new building.
Around february I was finally able to move the AM250 to the new building.
But now the new 400 took over the service nmr samples. Now the co-op had
to learn a new system. I had to teach her how to use the Varian, oversee
the installation of the 200, 300 and somewhat involved in the installation
of the AM250(since this would be my backup if something went wrong with
the 400). And I still had to provide nmr support to the chemists.
By March, everything was now in the new building and things were starting
to run smoothly. Since then I have installed another 400 with sample
changer, upgraded the 300, and added a sample prep robot. I converted the
recent 400 to a automated walk up with robot but kept the 300 as the
traditional "hands-on". Everyone is very happy the way things turned
out(including me) but it was an experience I would not want to do again.
What I forgot to mentioned, there was also an underlying theme,
the NMR service area is not allowed to go down. That is the reason
why the AM250 was kept. It was solely used as a backup and as a result
was very rarely used.
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>From scott@iastate.edu Thu Nov 16 01:16:46 1995
The Molecular Biology 500 followed them to a new building and we
continued to manage it. Distance management is hard because unless
you can be two places at once, people can easily feel ignored/slighted.
Maintainence was more difficult (we have real winters, I remember
pulling a nitrogen dewar through a foot of snow) and just
didn't get done as often. Although the instruments are available
for everyone to use, it seems that 1-5% of the users will
leave their building to collect data. We use ethernet so the instruments could
still communicate. We've just gone through a cordial parting and the
university is hiring someone to be there all the time.
We've just moved from the basement to the first floor. I wasn't
sure this was a good idea but its worked out ok (we are only floating
one of the four magnets) and its nice to have windows. If you are
moving up, you could try to get support under the magnets (concrete
blocks, not I beams) and then isolate the floor from the rest of the
building
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>From ALLAN@KERSHAW.usc.edu
My name is Allan Kershaw and I am the Director of NMR Instrumentation at
the other USC, the University of Southern California. I can sympathize
with your problem. We went through a similar situation here at USC about
five years ago.
The Chemistry department is currently spread through eight different
buildings and we too started examining the possibilities of getting a new
building. The end result of all this was that we could not raise enough
money to get started and we are still in the eight buildings. The longest
distance between buildings is about 200 to 250 yds.
My facility consists of 4 NMR's (from 250MHz to 500MHz) which are on the
ground floor in one building. I am also in charge of a UV/VIS
spectrophotometer which is on another floor of the same building and an
AA spectrophotometer which is a building about 200 yds in distance. Both
of these instruments do have some problems with lack of monitoring. The AA
in particular is very difficult to maintain due to its distance. The users
have left chemicals on and around the instrument on various occasions resulting
in corrosion of the console. Also, the tools and spare parts needed for the
operation of the instrument keep evaporating.
In regards to vibration, even on the ground floor here we have had vibrational
noise problems. Our 500MHz instrument is on vibration dampers to prevent this.
If you are forced to a higher floor, they may be of help to you also.
On a more positive note, as I said earlier, our labs are fairly widely spread
apart. This has not stopped the users from accessing the instruments. They
may think a little about the long walk, but a little encouragement from their
advisors usually gets them over the 'activation energy' problems. I have also
tried to make it easy for them to check the instruments before they have to
walk over here. The signup for the instruments is all computerized and can be
accessed via e-mail for those too far from the local net that controls the
facility.
I hope this is of some use for you. I know that if I was in your place I too
would be fighting to keep the facility in one place.
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