Dear Martin,

I will shortly describe our systems, and afterwards explain you why I 
wouldn't do it once more... :-)))
We have on the same optical table a Zeiss Axisoscope FS (fixed stage) 
and an Axiovert 200M sisntrument. The confocal system is an 
LSM510Meta-NLO with a Coherent Chameleon laser mounted on the same 
optical table. Our idea was to use the same confocal head on both stages 
(with the Zeiss systems this is relatively easy). The light path of the 
Chameleon was built in a way that can be directed either to the inverted 
stage or to the upright one. So the idea was to have one confocal system 
but change the stages depending on the application. Now, after a while 
it turned out that this is unrealistic in a core facility. Although 
mounting the confocal head is relatively easy, but re-aligning the 
multi-photon laser requires much more care/time - so you'll never do it 
on a daily base (even a weekly one is too much). So my current 
suggestion for such a system would be to purchase one upright system and 
one inverted one with a dedicated confocal head and sharing only the 
multi-photon laser between them. Electrophysiology is a rather special 
area with a somewhat tricky instrumentation (amplifiers etc.) - so I 
would not really suggest to host it in a general microscopy core 
facility. For enhanced flexibility on this system we use only a stage 
incubator (which is easy to remove etc.) and not a typical box-type one.

Cheers   Gabor
> Dear List--
>
> For those of you who have successful multi-photon live-cell imaging 
> cores: how have you set up your facilities?  If different users have 
> different requirements (e.g. upright vs. inverted stand; 
> temperature/CO2 control; ability to record electrophysiologically; 
> video-rate scanning vs. slower scanning), how do you accommodate them 
> all?  Are there some instruments or configurations that are 
> significantly more flexible and/or that provide more capabilities for 
> the money spent?  Are there some types of experiments that so 
> problematic that they're not worth attempting to support?
>
> Thanks.  Responses on- or off-list are welcome.
>
> Martin Wessendorf