Regarding JEOL JXA 8900 Superprobe

[Juvegre]

Dear All,

Just today informed that JEOL, will stop producing any spare parts for JEOL JXA 8900 Superprobe. Do you any of you guys know anything about that? This is an information related with JEOL in Europe; I guess that if it`s true, will be the same all over the world.

With Kind Regards,

Baziotis Ioannis
Lecturer Professor AUA

[Probeman]

Dear All,

Just today informed that JEOL, will stop producing any spare parts for JEOL JXA 8900 Superprobe. Do you any of you guys know anything about that? This is an information related with JEOL in Europe; I guess that if it`s true, will be the same all over the world.

With Kind Regards,

Baziotis Ioannis
Lecturer Professor AUA

Hi Ioannis,
I did not know this.  Hopefully your post will attract a comment by those who may know more.  The 8900 is a solid instrument so I expect it will continue to run for many years.

That said, I can tell you what some people in the Cameca world have done for the SX50/51 instruments, which are roughly the same vintage as the 8900... and also very difficult to obtain parts for, for quite a few years now. And that is to buy a non-functioning instrument just for the spare parts.

John Fournelle has done exactly this for his SX51. In fact I believe he has several spare SX50/51 instruments in storage just for the parts!  I am not sure if there is anyone doing anything similar in the JEOL world, but I'll bet there is...

[Anette von der Handt]

Hi, fellow 8900 owner chiming in. I just come off the phone talking to JEOL Chicago.

Spare parts are being produced only in the Japan Factory and the 8900 has been so long out of production that apparently they ceased manufacturing certain spare parts for some time (although it may be worthwhile to get further verification and more details from your JEOL representatives).

JEOL Europe and JEOL US are relying for our old models partly on their warehouse where they keep replaced and traded-in machines. JEOL US has a much bigger "stash" and they feel quite confident that they can support us for a little while longer. I don't know about the possibilities of JEOL Europe being able to request parts from JEOL US for example.

We have been already running into these problems with only having refurbished parts being available which was part of a whole nightmare this summer with parts failing right and left and the replacements not always working so great (although JEOL worked hard on this).

The real problems are the "optional" parts that were not that widespread and accordingly not that many spare parts were traded in. This is in our case the linear encoder stage where we are one of very few labs that have that at all. We currently have a stage controller box from a 8200 that thankfully worked. The main stage board also failed and there was no replacement at that point and the original non linear encoder board that is part of our own stash did not work either (I think due to firmware issues). I had our service engineer go through the board wiring one by one for a week to find the problem and solder it back and because he is great he found and fixed it.

Our linear encoder diode used to be from Radioshack but through a miracle JEOL US found a replacement one this summer that does not require the crudest McGuyvering to work.

Indeed, looking out for spare parts yourself and asking around the community will help you. I don't know if you have service contract, JEOL definitely tried their best in our case but I foresee that it will be more and more difficult to keep our machines alive no matter how much of our tender, loving care goes into them.