Software on the Varian Mercury 200 reloaded

 After January 4th, VnmrJ on the mercury 200 was not starting up correctly. The software was re-installed and this is fixed.

 MestReNova printing

 Printing from MestReNova is very slow on "keroppi".

 NMR Status page

 The NMR Facility is pleased to announce the new NMR Status page. It shows the status of all the NMR spectrometers and the state of the queues on the sample changers.

 Shimming issues on Bruker AvanceIII-400 solved

 The shimming issues on the Bruker Avance III 400 seem to be solved.

 MestreNova 5 Lite is available with ChemOffice 12

 All users in the University of Toronto can download a free yearly license for ChemOffice 12 from the Chemistry Library. This also includes a copy of MestreNova 5 Lite for both Windows and Macintosh. Go to the Chemistry Library for more information.

 Dr Darcy Burns

 Dr Darcy Burns has joined the NMR Facility as Associate Manager. 

Bruker BACS problems (updated)

 After just under 12,000 samples, the Bruker sample changer (BACS) is having problems.

 Bruker 400 (updated)

 The departmental Bruker AvanceIII-400 has some problems. First, Fluorine-19 tuning has become unreliable. Second, shimming also has become unreliable.

Bruker personnel installed patches to tuning and shimming and these are working again.

 Staffing updates November 2009 (updated)

 Just a note on staffing. First, Dr Timothy Burrow has the flu and pneumonia and will not be  back to work until Monday November 16th. Second, Ms Rose Balazs is on medical leave until mid-November. At this time only Dr Golembek is available and she will be in with her usual hours; 8:30-3 Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.

 Tuning

Some users are confused over tuning and what it does. Some probes appear not to need tuning whereas the newer systems spend some time tuning.

 Varian VnmrS-400 spinning issues

The inside of the magnet (what we call the upper barrel) was dirty and samples did not spin. This has been fixed.

 Bruker issues on overnight samples

 There was an error running samples overnight last night, for samples submitted on October 29.

 MestreNova on Keroppi upgraded

 I've upgraded the copy of MestreNova on Keroppi to version 6.0.2, the latest version. Version 6 has some nice additions that would be useful for all chemists, see below (Images stolen from MestreNova LLC):

 Bruker Avance Issues

 THere has been an intermittent error on the Bruker Avance III while running samples overnight. Many samples were not run. Last night, several samples were left in the queue, and not run.

 Varian Mercury 400 issues

 The spinning rate control on the Varian Mercury 400 was not functioning correctly. A sticky valve was replaced and spinning is working again.

 New associate manager

 We are please to say that an associate manager was hired and will start in November.

 Manager away until October 19th

 Dr Timothy Burrow will be away until October 19th. Dr Adina Golombek will be in as usual, on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursday until 3PM. Ms Rose Balazs is away until October 12. Dmitry will reset the sample queues in the morning. 

 Varian Mercury 300 issues

 There have been some problems with the Mercury 300:

On Friday, September 18, a brass hose connector came loose, causing incomplete ejection of samples and some broken NMR tubes.

Today, we spent some time looking over the spectrometer. I found a loose solder connection on the proton pre-amplifier. This will be fixed in-house.

 Mercury files not transferred

 The server was patched and rebooted yesterday Sept 15 2009. For about 4 hours (10 AM to 2 PM) FIDs were not transferred.

 All helium fills done

 All helium fills done.

 Helium fills

 We will be doing helium fills on the following spectrometers: Mercury 200, Mercury 300/SMS, Mercury 400/SMS, Unity 500 and Avance 400/BACS starting tomorrow, September 15 2009!

 Bruker Avance III-400 P31 shift error

 All Phosphorus-31 chemical shifts of samples run in C6D6 have an error! The chemical shifts are shifted downfield by 13.3560 ppm.

 More server fall-out

Some problems with moving to backup hardware after the server failed. 

FTP was not working

Printing to "babe" was not working

Mail out of NMR was not working until this morning.

Update September 10/2009 11 AM.

The departmental proxy "grandial" was being blocked. Only windows users within the department were affected and could not access the booking schedule and training signup. This has been fixed. 

Files from the Mercury 300 and 400 were not being copied for ~24h, an errant space in the script was removed and files are being copied again.

Update September 10/2009 1 PM.

Bruker files now transferring!

 Server problems

Because the Data drive (where all user data is stored) was reaching capacity, I copied all data to a new RAID system and installed in the server. All the data is OK, but the system did not boot. 

[6:15 PM most systems are now back online. The server had major hardware problems]

[7:15 PM all spectrometers working, all data stations working]

 Plotting colour issues

 There are problems with colour plotting from Keroppi. Follow these instructions to get the colours you want.

 Keroppi finally fixed

 The workstation Keroppi is working again. It has a copy of MNova and VnmrJ for users to process NMR data.

 NMR server problems

 The boot hard drive on the NMR server had problems starting ~9PM Saturday August 29. The drive was fixed by 11:45 PM.

 Mercury 400 problems

Communication between the console CPU and the Sun Sparcstation was lost last night ~ 9 PM. 

A faulty ethernet cable was replaced and the system is working again, 3 PM Saturday August 29.

 Connection to "nmrweb" blocked

 People within chemistry cannot connect to the nMR booking server, https://nmrweb.chem.utoronto.ca/ This is because of a configuration of the departmental squid proxy (grandial). 

 Mercury 400 problems

 The old software/sun computer system have had some problems lately. 

Swap of AutoX probe on Varian VnmrS-400

There is a problem with the tube switch selector on the probe in the Varian 400; the probe will be sent for repairs. We plan to swap the probe on Thursday August 27th, thus the spectrometer will be unavailable that day.

 Rose Balazs

 Ms Rose Balazs will be away until September 10th.

 NMR tube policy

 A brief summary of the NMR tube policy.

 Mercury 400 spinning issues [solved]

 There is a problem with the spinner control on the Varian Mercury 400. The part is is only about 25 years old...

Bruker AVIII-400 with BACS working again

 According to the schedule, the Bruker AVIII-400 with BACS was checked.

Also, not according to schedule, a leaking condensation pump in a  room across the hall flooded the floor around the system with dirty water.

 Workstation Keroppi problems

 The workstation keroppi suffered a hard drive failure. 

 NMR server blocked

 After a misconfiguration, the NMR server timothy was blocked by Frank Bures. We are waiting for it to be unblocked.

[AT 4 PM, the server was unblocked]

 Mercury 400 issues resolved

This morning, a tube that was cracked on the bottom was found on the sample changer rack of the Mercury 400 this morning. Because it was unclear if the crack was there before or after the sample was run, as a precautionary measure, the probe and upper barrel were washed and cleaned.

 Server updates

 The main NMR server will be updated today for security patches, with reboot around 10 AM.

[Update: server rebooted and all services restored.]

 Deuterium NMR

 Deuterium NMR has been added to the Varian VnmrS-400. 

 Carbon with Fluorine decoupling

 Carbon spectra with fluorine decoupling has been added to the VnmrS-400. This used garp decoupling to decouple from -100 to -175 ppm (the usual organic range). To change the decoupling window, set the "dof" parameter appropriately.

Click on the CarbonDECFluorine button on the experiment tab. There is also Phosphorus and Boron with Fluorine decoupling, which are PhosphorusDECFluorine and BoronDECFluorine, respectively.

Note that since the probe is only two channel, there is no proton decoupling; we need a H/F/X triple probe to decouple both proton and fluorine.

 Work on Mercury 300

There will be no access to the Mercury 300 on July 29 and July 30 for routine maintenance and computer upgrade.

 Helium Fills July 27, 2009

 Access to the Mercury 200, Unity 400 and Unity 500 will be limited on Monday July 27, 2009 for LHe fills.

 Helium Fills Thursday June 25

Due to Helium fills, access to the Mercury 300 and Mercury 400 will limited in the afternoon 2 PM onwards. Access to the Varian 400 will be limited on Friday morning.

 Centre for Spectroscopic Investigation of Complex Organic Molecules and Polymers (CSICOMP) funded!

 The CFI grant forwarded by Mark Lautens has been funded by CFI and the University's Infrastructure Operating Fund for a total of $3,365,393.

 Varian VnmrS-400 available again

 The Varian VnmrS-400 is available again.

 NMR Server rebooted

 From 5 PM to 6PM today (June 10 2009) the server was rebooted for patches.

 Files transferred from the Bruker

 Some files were transferring from the Bruker while others were not.

 Varian 400

 We have replaced the faulty part (frequency generator) on the Varian 400.

 NMR calendar

 The NMR calendar of events