As the number of Facility customers grows, the turnaround times are getting longer. The two major factors that slow us down are sample preparation and data interpretation.

The time spent on preparing and cleaning your samples is the time taken away from MS-related activities, e.g. operating and maintaining the equipment, processing and interpreting data, and developing better methods for your samples. Sample prep is something we can delegate to you, and many of our customers have been submitting MS-ready samples and getting their results quickly.

The new use rates are designed to save you money and time should you decide to prepare your own samples. This does not mean that we will no longer prepare your samples; it simply means that you will be billed for the staff time in addition to the instrument time if we have to spend a significant amount of time working on your samples.

To help you overcome beginner’s fright, I can present a series of 1-hr hands-on sample preparation workshops, which will be offered as needed (i.e. as soon as 5 people express interest in the same workshop topic). The cost will be $57 per person, and the protocols will be freely available on-line before the workshop announcement so that you can decide whether you wish to attend. I am open to suggestions for the first workshop, e-mail me at tnl1@psu.edu with the subject line ‘workshop topic’.