wilkaaro - 4-2-2011 at 14:34
Alright so the company that I work for is debating whether to purchase a new ICP-OES instrument. I've been talking to Agilent, thermo-fisher, and
Perkin-Elmer, all of them claim to be the best but I would like to talk to someone who has actually used the instrument.
DDTea - 4-2-2011 at 14:51
I use a Spectro CIROS ICP-OES unit. What are you looking for?
wilkaaro - 4-2-2011 at 16:46
Reliability, and through put are my primary concerns. Although ease of use, and a knowledgeable tech staff is always nice.
DDTea - 4-2-2011 at 18:05
To give you an idea, we have 2 Spectro CIROS CCD ICP-OES units and we are going to be getting a third. We have them running samples 24/7. Literally,
this lab runs hundreds of samples per day. Our lab gets discounts from instrument manufacturers because of our high intensity use, so we often see
problems that other labs may never have (e.g., an X-Ray leak from a certain XRF instrument at a very specific distance and a very specific angle in a
very weird place).
Our typical analyses measure the concentrations of 44 different elements at 80 different wavelengths with >500 correction factors applied.
Wavelength coverage is from 120nm-800nm. To perform the initial calibrations, 87 multi-element and single element standard solutions were prepared.
The method editor is pretty friendly though: there are a few "recommended" wavelengths for the different elements as well as possible interferences
from other elements (hence the need for multi-element standard solutions). I'm sure you know that if you really want to, you can write a thesis about
which emission line is best in a certain analysis.
The calibration holds pretty well. About once per week, we have to re-standardize the unit, which takes about 40 minutes. Daily, our initial checks
consist of verifying that the humidifer is full, reprofiling the detector, running a blank, and running our in-house standard. It all takes about 7
minutes (3 mins per sample, typically).
In the 9ish months I've been here, the biggest problem I've seen with one of the units was when our mass flow controllers malfunctioned and could not
keep a stable supply of Argon to the humidifier. Since we had to wait about a week to get a new one, we just said "hell with it" for a few days and
ran the unit without a humidifier. It worked. Next biggest problem is a slight attenuation of shorter wavelengths due to an air leak. However, with
inspections at 6 month intervals, this problem rarely presents itself and if it does, is deal with quickly. Apparently, Spectro's tech staff is
pretty easy to work with...I'm not the one who does the maintenance/method development though, so everything I know is either second hand or what I've
been trained to do 
From what I'm told, setting up the whole thing took about 6 months.