Light Sources
Metal Halide Light Sources These powerful light sources provide many benefits over conventional Hg or Xe light sources. Firstly they boast a bulb lifetime of 2000 hours over ten times the lifetime of a typical Hg bulb. Cost of operation is typically reduced to a third.They are designed to be fibre optically coupled to the microscope. As a result heat is removed from the microscope platform improving overall system stability. Systems are also available with computer controlled intensity levels settings, which can be linked to specific fluorescence labels. With typical systems costing less than £3,500 cost saving can be made in less than two years of operation. LED Light Sources With lifetime of greater than 10,000 hours these offer the most cost effective method of adding fluorescence to your microscope system. The only proviso is that each LED module is for a specific wavelength. So for standard systems using 2-3 fluorophores we would recommend this option. For users requiring multiple Wavelengths, i.e. DAPI, FITC,TRITC and then CFP/YFP etc we would recommend the metal halide light sources.
