Thank you Sharon !

I did want to mention a number of things you said so well, because my primary 
aim must be to get Roger's machines up and running. 

From a financial viewpoint, money is probably better spent on a new 
instrument, as old instruments like old cars will inevitably develop some 
other problem down the road. H/I does have a very attractive trade-in offer.

In any event, thanks again for the very sane input. 

With best regards,

Elfi Hacker
HACKER Instruments & Industries Inc


Roger, I believe the machines have served well in the line of duty.  One
is ten years old, the other is 6 years old.  If you have slipped several
hundred slides daily on each machine for their life duration, they have
been real troopers for you.  They could probably be rebuilt with all new
O rings, rubber gaskets, new springs, etc., but the cost might easily
approach half or more towards a new one.  How about looking for a
secondary vendor to sell them to and buy new ones.  Or, most likely,
they have been depreciated out long ago (average life for depreciation
is generally 5 years with some rare items being 10 yrs while some corps
do a 3 yr depreciation) and you may wish to look at the scrap heap or
donation to some organization.  They would probably work for low volume
lab with adjustments, but not high volume in current condition.  Just
some points to consider.  sharon osborn

Roger Moretz wrote:

> We have 2 Hacker RCM 3655 coverslippers, purchased in
> '90 and'94.  While they have been sources of much
> frustration, until recently we have been able to keep
> our recoverslipping (due to air bubbles) the less than
> 10%, altho' we do get a lot of overflow onto the top
> and bottom of the slides.  For the last 2-3 months,
> however, the air bubble rate has approached 90% at
> times, and even with overflow, we're getting air
> bubbles.  Our current service provider has been in
> several times, and the machines work fine for maybe 24
> hours, and then the medium amount starts drifting, and
> we're back to uselessness.  Two questions:
> 1) can we get references for service providers in the
> northeast?  (no, I will NOT give the name of our
> current provider).
> 2) is it possible that the machines have
> reached/surpassed their useful lifetimes, and we can
> finally have a "throwing them off the roof" party?
> We would all appreciate any useful comments.  At the
> moment we are hand coverslipping, because the
> recoverslipping problem is causing us to struggle to
> meet deadlines, and this is impacting our
> productivity.
>
> Roger Moretz
> Dept of Toxicology
> BI Pharmaceuticals
>
> _______________________________________________