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
>