Zeiss makes plastic barelled water immersion lenses up to a 63X 0.9 na.
                                                                George.
 
>Have no companies made objectives with ceramic or other non-metallic casing?
>I know ceramic is not the best heat insulator but are there other
>materials which would have low thermal expansion and conductivity and which
>could be machined to hold the glass bits?
>
>For heating objectives one could also use heating tape which is an
>electrical resistance element that can be formed around objects.  Omega I
>think has this and controllers as well.
>Milton Charlton
>University of Toronto
>
>
>On Tue, 15 Oct 1996, Richard L. Nuccitelli wrote:
>
>> That is a classic objective heat-sink problem.  Heating the stage does not
>> help if you have a huge metal objective at room temperature in contact with
>> the bottom of your coverslip.  Your cells will certainly be closer to the
>> temperature of the objective than the stage.  Simple and cheap solution:
>> wrap copper tubing around your objective and pass heated water through it.
>> Rich Nuccitelli
>>
>> At 09:04 PM 10/15/96 -0300, you wrote:
>> >Dear Fellow confocalists,
>> >
>> >I wish someone out there could shed some light (!) into my
>> >problem: I have a BioRad 1024 UV system set on an Zeiss
>> >Axiovert 100 with an Ludl K adapter/ motorized stage. The
>> >problem I have, and I believe I'm not alone in this, is
>> >to find a system that will enable to keep cells
>> >(mammalian at 37 oC) alive and still allow observation
>> >using either the lumpy -40x 1.2 water immersion- or the
>> >slimmer -63x1.4 oil- objectives. I've contacted
>> >Bioptechs, LSR and ALA, but still am not sure if any of
>> >their systems will actually work on the Zeiss microscope,
>> >with those objectives. The problem is that the
>> >objectives, being so large, hardly touch different
>> >coverslip holders that will be heated by the system.
>> >
>> >Does anyone have any experience with this (trivial but
>> >crucial) problem ?
>> >
>> >Thanks in advance,
>> >
>> >Renato Mortara
>> >
>> >Escola Paulista de Medicina - UNIFESP
>> >Disciplina de Parasitologia
>> >Rua Botucatu, 862
>> >04023-062
>> >Sao Paulo SP BRASIL
>> >phone: 55 11 571-1095  fax: 55 11 571-1095
>> >email: [log in to unmask]
>> >
>> >
>> Richard Nuccitelli
>> Molecular and Cellular Biology
>> University of California, Davis
>> Davis, CA 95616
>> (916)752-3152 FAX:(916)752-1449
>>