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Aperture and Optical
Fibers The
optical fibers are made of acrylic plastics. They are softer than glass
and can be scratched by sand, metal and other hard objects. These
fibers are also sensitive to alcohol and organic solvents. If they must
be cleaned, use lens paper, distilled water and mild detergent. When
the case is opened, be careful not to touch the fibers. They are glued
on both ends and may break when touched.
No UV Light UV
light shortens the lifetime of the fiber optics. If your light source
emits UV light and your microscope transmits it, use the appropriate
filters to make sure the array aperture is not exposed to this light. Avoiding Moisture Moisture
is damaging to some of the electronic components of the array. Thus it
is recommended that the array be stored and operated in a dry
environment (humidity <40%). Avoiding Power-on
Surge There
are 1536 high gain amplifier chips in each system. All powered by the
same power supply. The accumulated power-on surge current can be very
large, causing damage and/or smoke. Be sure to turn the power on and
off when all the gain switches are in the low position (X1). Power-on
surge may also damage the A/D board when it is not powered. Always have
the computer on before turning on the array amplifiers. One way to
achieve most this is to leave the computer on continuously.
Measure
the resting light intensities with the AC coupling time constant set to
2 seconds. Cross talk Between
Channels There
is always some cross talk between channels even if no channels are
saturated. Keeping the amplifier gain small (but large enough so that
the noise is digitized well) will inimize
this cross talk (<5%). Because this level of cross talk is generally
less than the noise in the measurement, we have never detected it in a
real experiment. During testing using a step of light that is too large
(it saturates some channels) will cause a very large cross talk between
channels. Green Grounding
Terminal In
typical installations this grounding terminal is not used. If line
frequency noise is detected, you might try connecting this ground to
other grounds in the apparatus. |
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