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As someone who used to do preventative and emergency maintenance on -80 freezers, this hits hard. The number of nights I spent swapping samples from one unit to another because the first unit was failing was a lot... but it was automatic triple time.
We talking ThermoFischer Scientific, or others? Is there a reliable ULT freezer anyone can recommend?
Edit: also what were the common failures?
Absolutely real on the thermofisher one. We had one die once. I have a photo of it actively dying of death early this year. It's about to get carted off as we got a rebate for recycling our old freezers.
That day was funny bc I was able to leave early that day but I was waiting for my sister to finish her classes before we went home. So I was playing TF2 on my laptop using my work dock before my supervisor's supervisor walked in. Luckily for me she did not care.
We transferred all the samples to the one beside it.
Edit: I think that was the only -80 freezer that had issues and it was probably 15 years old when it died. The newer thermo Fisher isotemps seem to be okay.
We used whatever we could get our hands on.
A frozen seal was probably the most common, which is not world ending as it is fine after you defrost it. But once it is defrosted you have to recertify it, which takes about a week.
I'm going to intentionally misread seal because life is more fun that way
Ork! Ork! Ork!
what is the process for certifying a seal and why do they lose it when they thaw? is it harder to balance a ball on your nose when you're fluid?
They sound like they're made of rare incandescent light bulbs, Jatco CVTs and Seagate hardrives post tsunami
Or you get one installed and qualified only for one to die right as that gets put into service, so now you need to buy and qualify another one...
If I had a nickel for every time this happened I would have probably about a buck thirty-five, which is not a lot, but shit did this happen too often.