Which is too bad because they are really easy to use.

However, a word on the automatic EDS system – they can be wrong as different elements have different families of peaks at the same energy level, so you have to know what to expect to identify to avoid any confusion (i.e. you need to study some EDS spectrum analysis to know whether or not your computer’s confused.)

Only real complaint is the stage controls are manual, so you have to use knobs of the front of the box to scan around the surface of the specimen holder.

Oh, and it really is best to have them on a fairly stable table – my instructor took ours out to a local school and they had a problem with the image being jittery. Turns out the vibrations from the diaphragm vacuum pump on the same cart with it were causing the wobble.

If you need to use these under a high vacuum, you’ll need a turbo molecular pump, which run in the multiples of thousands of dollars to purchase.

This thing is so easy the manual is only like 20 pages long (though ours doesn’t have the EDS system).

Also, depending on the EDS system, it will cost more, because you either need A) liquid nitrogen to cool the EDS crystal to operating temperatures, to prevent the lithium drifted silicon from ejecting the lithium from it’s current interstitial atomic positions, or B) A super-expensive type of EDS system that uses peltier coolers but is much faster and doesn’t need to be as cold due to advances in EDS detector crystal fabrication. Though this is a guess since our older TM-1000 doesn’t have the EDS attachment, it’s based on my knowledge of EDS detectors currently used in industry.

Because the image detector is a backscatter electron detector instead of a secondary electron detector, your resolution is limited but your material will display contrast based on the atomic number of the material you are viewing, the lower the atomic number the darker the material will appear.

Which is too bad because they are really easy to use.

However, a word on the automatic EDS system – they can be wrong as different elements have different families of peaks at the same energy level, so you have to know what to expect to identify to avoid any confusion (i.e. you need to study some EDS spectrum analysis to know whether or not your computer’s confused.)

Only real complaint is the stage controls are manual, so you have to use knobs of the front of the box to scan around the surface of the specimen holder.

Oh, and it really is best to have them on a fairly stable table – my instructor took ours out to a local school and they had a problem with the image being jittery. Turns out the vibrations from the diaphragm vacuum pump on the same cart with it were causing the wobble.

If you need to use these under a high vacuum, you’ll need a turbo molecular pump, which run in the multiples of thousands of dollars to purchase.

This thing is so easy the manual is only like 20 pages long (though ours doesn’t have the EDS system).

Also, depending on the EDS system, it will cost more, because you either need A) liquid nitrogen to cool the EDS crystal to operating temperatures, to prevent the lithium drifted silicon from ejecting the lithium from it’s current interstitial atomic positions, or B) A super-expensive type of EDS system that uses peltier coolers but is much faster and doesn’t need to be as cold due to advances in EDS detector crystal fabrication. Though this is a guess since our older TM-1000 doesn’t have the EDS attachment, it’s based on my knowledge of EDS detectors currently used in industry.

Because the image detector is a backscatter electron detector instead of a secondary electron detector, your resolution is limited but your material will display contrast based on the atomic number of the material you are viewing, the lower the atomic number the darker the material will appear.