UW CHEMISTRY NMR

Dear NEO Users

Appeal 1 : the problem of “Orphaned NMR Tubes”

Please take a moment to behold the ‘status quo’  of samples near the instrument that I recorded yesterday.

Now, this is over and above all the holder positions of the sample Carousel being completely occupied during the time of the picture snapping.

With the ease of simply walking up to the instrument and loading your sample in the queue comes an inevitable cost.  You can inadvertently clog up the pipeline pretty quickly.

Given the fact that, even with  “one sample at a time” operations on all the other instruments, users simply abandon their NMR sample tubes for Adrienne and I to deal with, I am not surprised that NEO500 is being afflicted with this pattern.

But we MUST mend our ways, and URGENTLY.  We got quite a bit of flak from the recent EH&S inspections about abandoned NMR tubes, with liquids of varying characters without any clue as to what those chemicals are ! We are on the watch list such that when the next inspection occurs, they don’t want to see this again.

I am not a deciding authority, but if EH&S concludes that the NMR facility is in constant violation on this front, whatever consequence that follows won’t be pleasant to any of you and your research goals.

You have been told about the following during NEO500 training and orientation :

• Make note of when your sample’s acquisition will start from IconNMR’s interface
• Consider how much time your particular experiments will take to finish. Add a maximum of 5 minutes buffer for each unique sample as overhead (VT stability, Lock, Shim, etc.)
• Determine from the above, when your sample(s) will be done, approximately.

• Set a timer of your choice if needed, and stroll down to pick up your samples PROMPTLY.
  

ADDITIONAL SUPPORT :

• You can always click on the following link (even better, bookmark it) to check that your sample’s acquisition is done before taking the time to come down, in the midst of a busy day at the Chemistry bench.
• An automatic email feature that will send you both an alert after your sample is done and a PDF of the spectrum, is being tested and I hope to deploy this early next week.  You will get a post on the same soon.

Appeal 2 :   Need your help in clearing ‘Failed:’  sample holder positions

For many reasons, your acquisition run may be flagged as ‘Failed’ by IconNMR.   When this happens,  only the user who queued up that experiment AND the nmrsuperuser (i.e. me and Adrienne)  will be able to delete that particular entry.

Until that happens, no one can use that holder position.

• When you come down to pick up your sample, look for those samples that ‘Failed’ and the reason behind the same.
• If it’s an issue that requires time to address, such as your sample condition, please login as yourself and go to that holder position entry and delete it.
• If it is a momentary glitch that seemed to have disappeared (based on other successful runs after you), you can decide to resubmit that sample.

I show an example here.

Either way, you can clear that particular holder so that the throughput is not affected. This becomes all the more important during those after office odd hours or weekends, when no one with the superuser privilege will be around to address it immediately.

Thank you for your help with this.

NMR Facility Manager

5/25/23