Usage Rules: AV‑500 Spectrometer

Access to the AV-500 is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with the exception of 2 hours every Wednesday for the weekly liquid nitrogen fill as well as routine maintenance and probe changes when necessary. The current protocol is that the automation queue is paused at ~9:30 am Wednesday and the nitrogen fill begins once the experiment running at that time completes.  Please note that this can introduce an uncertainty in the start time of the fill up to an hour.

The AV-500 user base can be broadly categorized into two separate groups – (a) those that want routine NMR data for structural characterization and (b) those that are doing development work OR running non-routine NMR experiments.  These two groups have conflicting access requirements since the needs of group “a” are best served by using the autosampler whereas the autosampler generally gets in the way of the requirements of group “b”.  Since group “a” has historically dominated the day-to-day usage, the AV-500 operates by default with the autosampler in place “around-the-clock”.  Users simply place their sample in the next available slot and queue the experiments within ICONNMR.  There is no need to signup for time within CALCIUM when using the autosampler.

Group “b” users are able to reserve the 500 on week-ends during the time-period from 4:00 pm on Friday until 9:30 am Monday morning.  Shorter reservations are permitted but in this case, the researcher will be responsible for restarting the automation queue when the appointment is finished. All appointment time must be reserved in CALCIUM at least 2 days in advance.