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Nathalia,

Not knowing anything about your setup or what you are looking at, my 
first guess would be temperature fluctuations.  Try and let the 
microscope and stage warm up for a couple of hours, enclose as much 
as possible in some sort of  chamber (a large bag may work in a pinch).

One check- during z-drift, does the z-encoder indicate that the 
z-position is fixed? Another check- try setting upper and lower 
limits for a z-stack and (rapidly) move between those tow 
setpoints.  Is there hysteresis present?  Those can tell you if there 
is a hardware problem.

Andy

At 08:58 AM 11/8/2007, you wrote:
>Search the CONFOCAL archive at
>http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?S1=confocal
>
>Hi all,
>I need some help. We have a 1 year old Leica SP5 inverted scope and pretty
>much all of a sudden we started to get z-drift. Every time you do a time
>lapse, no matter what the z-step or time interval, the system does not start
>at the top of the sample, it moves down significantly and progressively.
>Anything I can do to fix this?
>
>I have called the service rep but would like to fix the problem ASAP. It is
>possible that I am the first person to use the system for this application
>since we upgraded the software and firmware.
>
>Nathalia
>
>--
>Nathalia Glickman Holtzman Ph.D.
>Department of Biology SB D328
>Queens College, CUNY
>65-30 Kissena Boulevard
>Flushing, NY 11367
>
>Office: 718-997-3678
>Lab: 718-997-3517
>Fax: 718-997-3445

Andrew Resnick, Ph. D.
Instructor
Department of Physiology and Biophysics
Case Western Reserve University
216-368-6899 (V)
216-368-4223 (F)