We had the tape coverslipper for several years, and while no problems occured 
immediately, problems did develop over time. The tape lifted on about 200 of 
the teaching slide sets. I was not a happy camper when I had to recover them 
with glass. Some of them were beyond help and I had to re-cut about 100. The 
pathologists never liked the tape from day 1 because they said the resolution 
was different from glass (makes sense to me) and they could never get a sharp 
photograph. We do a lot research and teaching slides, so I switched to glass 
coverslipper about 5 years ago. I don't know about the new ones, they might be 
much better.









>===== Original Message From Lee & Peggy Wenk <lpwenk@mail.netquest.com> =====
>Have some questions from our pathologists -
>
>How long have the tape coverslippers been in use in

>histology labs? How "old" is the oldest tape coverslipper?
>
>Any one out there been using one for that long?
>
>For those who have been using a tape coverslipper
>for that long, have you gone back and looked at
>the quality of the coverslip on these old slides?
>Are they falling off? Curling up around the edges?
>Turning yellow? Turning opaque? Getting bleaching
>or leeching of tissue stains? etc. I'm looking
>for consistent trends, not the every-now-and-then
>problem.
>
>We have had our tape coverslipper for about 5
>years, and have not had any of the above problems,
>other than one occasional slide out of thousands.
>
>But our pathologists would like to hear from
>labs with more years of use, to see if they have
>had any of these problems.
>
>Please note: I'm NOT saying these coverslippers
>are bad. We love ours (we have 2). Just looking
>to see if any changes can be expected down the
>road.
>
>We did this when we were coverslipping by hand.
>We used to use a synthetic mounting media that
>flowed great while coverslipping (good point),
>took a long time to set (bad point), stains looked
>great when first viewed (good point), but if you
>pulled the same slides some years later, the
>H&E stains were bleached out (very bad point).
>So we switched to the more modern synthetic
>mounting media with anti-oxidant and plasticisor,
>and we didn't see that problem again. And, of
>course, had to remove the coverslip and restain
>any old slides that the pathologists needed to
>do a review on. (No, we didn't restain all
>"trillion" slides.)
>
>So we just want to see what problems, if any, might
>be arising in the future with the tape coverslipper.
>
>Thanks in advance for any information.
>
>Peggy A. Wenk, HTL(ASCP)
>William Beaumont Hospital
>Royal Oak, MI 48073