Again, I got in early to repeat the start up procedure and, as it should, she started up well and lasers required minimal alignment even with a tip change. This truly is the easiest instrument in the BD range to set-up, align and even teach others about Flow Cytometry (providing you have great engineers setting you up of course). Nikki with only 8 months of Flow under her belt has found the instrument to be very easy to setup and spent some time swapping nozzles over, moving the stream about and still has very little to do alignment wise. Its a beautiful thing aligning a stream to fixed objectives rather than the other way around (Vantage) it makes so much sense and is proving to be a joy to start up in the mornings.
After a morning of trouble shooting the 6 way separation, we made a few slight adjustments to the deflection plates and saw that the 'bowing' affect on the 6 streams was reduced significantly thanks to Brent's modifications, so, we were all set to show off our new instrument and skills to visitors later that day.
Centenary Institute's Dr Adrian Smith and Robert Salomon arrived in the early afternoon and we showed sorting beads using the 6 way collection tubes, they were also interested in changing PMT detector blocks and some features of the Influx like sorting on Time as a parameter and also Index sorting. Everything went according to plan (or course) and they left satisfied. BD were great in allowing me to show them the instrument and I really appreciated Darren's offer to do the demo. Brent was there to support the higher end questions that were asked and together I feel we pulled it off. Later that afternoon, I began to shutdown so I started to pack up and head home. A pat on the back from Mark and a comment about running on fumes sealed the deal and I headed off.
Brent - I can't thank you enough for everything you have done for us with the build of the instrument, the quality of the installation was of extremely high standards and you have provided us with an amazing platform for our researchers to utilise. Mark - you have been a rock this week for us and your help, guidance, information and conversations about the instrument have been put so simply that I feel you have given us the confidence we need to really run with this so thank you so much. Darren, your knowledge of the instrument is so thorough, your experience with sorting from your old days, your a wealth of information and I am really looking forward to our training that begins in a couple of weeks so thank you and we are keen to run some panels and get used to the workflow of FACS Sortware™. Craig, having you here has been a great addition and I hope you have enjoyed your time in Sydney, I look forward to bouncing ideas with you and calling on your expertise from time to time, thank you. Also, thanks to all at BD especially Christine Bligh & Marlene Daalmeyer for their help, support, professionalism and planning to get us to this point. Thank you. Adam your help and mate-ship is much appreciated as always, we'll see you soon for a demo.
Finally to Ger, thank you, again, your ideas and expertise behind building the Influx are so greatly appreciated, from someone like myself and Nikki that run Vantage everyday, we really see the differences you have made to Flow Cytometry as a whole with this instrument and I can't thank you enough for such a beautiful piece of engineering brilliance. I look forward to seeing you soon in Seattle for Advanced hardware training with Brent (an amazing opportunity that I am very grateful for).
I would also like to thank Dr Stuart Tangye and Dr Robert Brink for the opportunity to run such an amazing instrument in such an incredible institute, our facility is proving to be a real hub for research and I am so grateful to be a part of it all. Thank you both so much
On that note, I will sign off from the Influx installation blogs, and until the LSR7 is installed, stay tuned. Thanks for reading.
Best wishes,
Chris
ps, Marlene, we named the instrument the DMC-12 after the beloved DeLorean car from the Back To The Future movies - with its Flux capacitor how could we resist.
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