Hi David I was using a very similar Belle Technology setup during my PhD. One thing we did was to modify the receiving dewar in the microscope chamber by screwing in small metal clips to the inside wall such that standard Hampton magic wands could be clipped immediately after plunging. That allowed for fast freezing and xtals could be properly sorted out later.
HTH R On Apr 24, 2012, at 3:20 PM, David Gallagher wrote: Hi all, I've been using a Belle technologies anaerobic glovebox with in built microscope and liquid nitrogen dewar port in an attempt to harvest and cryo-cool crystals in an oxygen free environment. I've been having some problems with icing and think this is most likely due to slow speed that it is possible to plunge loops into the liquid nitrogen. I've been plunging loops straight into vials preloaded into an ESRF puck (with pusher). This requires more care than what I would ordinarily do (i.e. plunging into bulk liquid nitrogen then and manouvering into a vial afterwards and then clipping said vial into a cane) and so takes longer - perhaps leading to icing. The latter technique is not available as the glovebox set up means that the dewar can only be reached by my right hand - the microscope is in the way! Does anyone have any experience of a similar set up and if so have some advice as to how I can overcome this problem? Many thanks, Dave Gallagher -- David Gallagher PhD Student MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit Wellcome Trust / MRC Building Hills Road Cambridge CB2 0XY Email: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Phone: 01223 252913 Roberto Steiner, PhD Group Leader Randall Division of Cell and Molecular Biophysics King's College London Room 3.10A New Hunt's House Guy's Campus SE1 1UL, London, UK Tel 0044-20-78488216 Fax 0044-20-78486435 [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
