Responsible personell: Endy (45279377)

Online booking is compulsory!

After training you will have access to

working alone on the instrument. All

insertion of samples is done by

responsible MIC personell (Endy and

Reidar).

Jeol JEM 1230

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Table of content:

The control panel page 3

The sample holder page 4

High tension and beam page 5

Simple beam alignment page 8

Focussing your sample page 9

Inserting camera page 11

Taking pictures page 12

How to save your dm3 images page 14

Converting dm3 images to tiff page 15

Turning off the system page 16

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JEOL JEM 1230

This switch will

change the

magnification.

Bring it to the left

to go down in

magnification and

right to go up.

Control the brightness of you beam.

Leave these buttons on (green light) to have a stepwise increase/decrease of the brightness and focus.

Focusing knobs:

coarse and fine.

The wobbler is

usefull for adjusting

the focus.

This button is used when acquiring a photo

onto the film negative. This is rarely in use.

Beam shift is used

to align the beam

(this is explained

later).

Control board

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1 2 3 4 5

Date: Name: Specimen:

The sample holder

The pentaholder will fit 5 samples at a time. MIC personnel will help you insert your samples into

the microscope. Remember to fill out the form with the sample positions.

Once inserted, you can change between samples by turning

the middle wheel (arrow). The number which shows up next to

the white circle indicated the sample position on the holder.

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1 2 3 4 5

3. 3.

Turning on the high tension and the beam

1. Click onto the circle in front of HT, then click onto ON.

2. A ”Ready” will appear behind the HT within 10 seconds.

3. Now turn on the beam by clicking first into the circle in front of

the beam, the click onto ON.

4. The beam will come on within 20 sec. You will notice the beam

current rising from 33 to 44 µA. If the beam current does not

rise, notify Endy, the filament could be broken.

5. Turn on the power (A) for the gatan camera. Turn on the

cooling (B) for better images. Be careful not to «heat» the

camera which is the same switch as for cooling.

1. 1.

A B

2.

5

Make sure that the ”specimen position” window

is open to orientate yourself on the grid.

Use the ”roller mouse” to move the grid around

in order to find your samples.

You can also move around by clicking inside the

speciment position monitor, but be sure to be in

«point» mode.

Roller mouse. Click onto the arrows to increase the speed.

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Specimen position

Is the beam well aligned?

Beam slightly missaligned Ok alignment

It is very simple to align the beam yourself:

1. Focus your beam (make it small) using the ”brightness” knob.

2. Press ”beam shift” on the control board (it should be green).

3. Use the right mouse button to move the beam into position.

4. Press ”beam shift” again (green light comes off).

Fluorescent

screen Fluorescent

sample

mirror

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Focussing your sample

Before focussing your sample, make sure the ocular is in focus for

your eyes.

When there is light on your sample, look into the ocular and use the

black knob on the side to focus the black spot you see inside your

field.

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Focussing your sample

To focus you sample use the two knobs (coarse and fine) and

focus first on the large fluorescent screen.

For fine focus, bring down the fluorescent sample mirror and

use the oculars. Some people prefer to focus using the

”wobbler”. Press ”wobbler” on the control table and use the two

focusing knobs to stop the image from moving. When image is

still, you have focus.

BUT: remember to turn off the wobbler !

To bring down

the

fluorescent

sample mirror,

pull down this

handle. 9

Focus onto

something with

a lot of

contrast.

Inserting the camera

The Gatan camera has a resolusion of 1024x1024 pixels. The camera is

very sensitive, so make sure the current density is under 10 pA/cm2

before inserting the camera!

Open the software:

DigitalMicrograph.

Insert the camera, see other page. 10

To insert camera, make sure

the current density is benieth

10 pA/cm2. Select ”camera

inserted” (you will hear a

sound and your image on the

fluorescent screen is gone).

Select ”start view” and a

window with the live image

shows up.

This window is for the live

image. The resolusion is not so

good, and the refresh time is

dependant upon the beam

brightness. Yellow means too

little light, red means too much

and green means perfect

illumination condition.

This window is for the picture

acquisition. Press ”start

acquire” when you want to

take a picture.

To change the settings for

both live image and

acquisition image, click onto

the hammer sign (not

recomended).

The rectangular should be in this

range before acquiring an image.

Auto exposure just makes life

a whole lot easier. If you don’t

have a homogenous sample,

you might want to remove the

«auto» function and test out

different exposure times.

Taking pictures

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Preview picture

Full resolution picture

After you press ”start acquire”,

the image will appear within a

few seconds.

The scalebar on the preview image is wrong, but the scalebar

on the full resolution image is correct.

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To save this image, go to file – save image as, and save your image in the user-folder

(shortcut on desktop). The image must be saved as a gatan file (dm3). This format is

specific for the gatan software. You will export the images once you finish your session.

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”File – batch convert”, find your folder and start the convertion from dm3 to tif. You will not loose

your raw data, instead you will get extra copies as tif format.

You can save the files temporarily on C:\users save here\

Converting dm3 images to tif

After you’ve acquired all your images, you can convert them to tif in the following way:

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Turning off the system when you have finished working

2.

1. 1.

2.

1. Make sure the camera is not inserted. Turn off the

beam by selecting OFF in control window.

2. Turn off the HT by selecting OFF in control window.

3. You will be asked if it’s ok to execute ”HT Mode OFF”,

select OK.

4. Turn off thee cooling (B) and the main power (A) for the

gatan camera control box.

3. A B

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You should now see light on the fluorescent table.

If it’s dark:

• check if the current density is 0.

• If it’s not, then turn up the brightness (on the control board)

• check that you are in the middle of your grid (specimen position window). Use the mouse

to move around as you could be on top of a mesh.

• check if the camera is still inserted (through the software).

If it’s still dark, it could be a problem with the filament.

→ contact Endy

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Troubleshooting

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