A Well Oiled Machine

This previous week has been quite uneventful at the LPL in terms of using the electron microscopes. This was because the machines had a scheduled visit from the home company, EDAX. Luckily, I was able to watch the servicing of the Focused Ion Beam (FIB) Microscope while I was in on Monday. The gentleman who serviced the machine first ran a number of tests on the machine. He then changed some software options that had been solutions to known bugs in the system. Lastly, he took down a list of software bugs Dr. Wallace and his fellow associates have been experiencing while using the software. Some of these bugs he could fix on the spot, others he had heard about but no fix was readily available.

Most importantly, he installed an updated version of OIM to our computers at the lab, as well as provided us with some folders and programs we did not originally have. These included a number of "movies" or video tutorials on the TEAM software. I did begin to watch these at my stay at the LPL last week. With my progress, Dr. Wallace is trying to set up time for us to use the FIB and analyze a sample. This would be a simple man-made sample, for example a copper film or aluminium sheet, but it would be my first time using the machine. Dr. Wallace hopes we can start tomorrow when I come in, however things may not work accordingly to plan.

Since we had not been using the FIB over the last week, I spent a lot of time at the lab reading more material and taking more notes.

As a break from the book reading and note taking, I was invited to the Zega meeting on Wednesday the 15th. My favorite part of the meeting was when Dr. Pierre Haenecour practiced his presentation he was going to give the following day. His presentation was on micrometeorites. Although it was still difficult to follow such an advanced subject, I caught parts of it.

In the end, the week was another experience. Working in a laboratory with some of the worlds most advanced machinery does not mean we have to use them every day. Even the worlds most advanced technology has their flaws and requires assistance to fix them, but hopefully these updates will continue to let us dive further into the field and bring us new tools and methods to improve our work.