Dear Colleagues: Just about seven years ago, I sent many of you an announcement that we were again ready to supply freezing machines to people who needed them. It's taken a bit longer than expected to make this a reality, but we have finally managed to get our "Cryopress" manufactured again, and the next production run of 5 machines ready to ship. These are slightly modified & improved versions of our original liquid helium-cooled, copper-block "slammer." They've been tested extensively in our lab for months now, and seem to perform at least as well as the original. They have ended up costing $28,000 to manufacture, once outfitted with a proper table to stand them on, plus all the electronic circuitry they needed, plus a solid shipping crate and the critical vacuum-insulated liquid helium transfer line that needs to be custom-fabricated for them. (Given how expensive liquid helium is becoming, we have also designed the latest versions of these machines so that they will work equally well with liquid nitrogen. They will each be delivered with the adapters necessary to use either, or both, cryogens.) If you are interested in procuring one of these new freezing machines, I'd be glad to ask the little firm that is making them here in St. Louis, Valiant Instruments, to send you one of their official quotes, or you could contact this company directly. Additionally, I'd be glad to send you all our standard protocols for freeze-fracture, freeze-etching, freeze-substitution, and freeze-drying of the many different sorts of samples that can be well-frozen with the Cryopress in preparation for TEM or SEM. Yours truly, |