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In October 2000 the NanoSIMS
passed all the tests that were specified in our
contract at the CAMECA factory in Paris. Now it was
finally time to pack up the entire instrument and
ship it to St. Louis. It first went by air cargo to
New York and then by truck to St. Louis, where it
had to go through customs
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The entire shipment consisted of
four huge wooden crates. The largest one alone had
a gross weight of almost 3 tons as can be seen on
this shipping label.
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On December 1st, 2000, the
crates arrived in two trucks at the Physics
Department. Luckily, it was not snowing that day.
It was not so easy to get the boxes out of the
truck and the whole operation took all morning. The
fork lift did not actually lift the boxes, but
rather pulled them inch by inch onto the loading
dock
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As always, when some hard work
needs to be done, there were plenty of spectators
who were ready to take pictures any
moment.
In the front are Olga
Pravdivtseva, Sachiko Amari, Scott Messenger, Ernst
Zinner and Bob Walker.
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Getting the boxes into the
building was not much easier than getting them out
of the truck. We had not really measured everything
before, but somehow everything fit just perfectly.
At this point our biggest concern was not to drop
the crates and break the instrument at the last
moment. That's why we lifted the boxes always only
a few inches off the ground and everything
proceeded very slowly.
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Once inside we started to open
the crates. The biggest one (shown here) had one
box inside the other for extra protection. The
shipping company really did a great job and it took
us two days to get everything taken
apart.
Tim Smolar and Frank Stadermann
on top of the crate.
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Finally: A first glimpse at the
NanoSIMS. Everything looked fine.
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It got more interesting, though:
The cargo elevator that was supposed to bring the
instrument to our lab on the 4th floor
malfunctioned (for the first time in years) at
exactly the moment when the 2-million-dollar
instrument was loaded into it. The elevator made it
up to the 4th floor, but ended up about 1 foot too
high and then completely stopped doing anything.
Tim is wondering what to do next.
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A little later, an elevator
repairman starts some routine maintenance service
down in the elevator shaft, totally unaware of the
3 ton load above his head. Here,Tim is trying to
yell to him down there to alert him of the
problem.
Eventually, of course,
everything comes to a happy conclusion and the
machine is unloaded at the right level.
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The main part of the instrument
is at its ultimate destination in the lab. At this
point, the airlock part and the ion sources are
still missing.
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With the help of a fork lift,
the airlock system is being transported to the
right location. This 'small' component weighs 250
kg and is really awkward to maneuver
around.
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In a similar way, the ion source
assembly is being moved to its place. Danny, our
fork lift driver did a great job navigating his big
machine through our lab without hitting anything.
He said, this was the first time he has gotten
instructions like "one inch forward" or "up one
quarter-inch" in all the time he has been driving
fork lifts.
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Tim Smolar (left) and Eric
Inazaki (right) help Bernard Vautier of CAMECA to
position the sources on the primary column of the
NanoSIMS.
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Almost three years after signing
the contract with CAMECA and several more years
after we got first interested in the new ionprobe
design we finally have a good reason to celebrate.
The first commercial NanoSIMS has arrived at the
Laboratory for Space Sciences.
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