Peak Performance- The Walk Around

Steve Twining

Connecting Laboratories With Cutting Edge, Reliable Analysis Tools

July 21, 2015

It’s vacation time!  There’s no experience quite like the luxury of climbing into a jet aircraft, getting a fantastic meal in flight, and having all of the room in the world to stretch out for a nice relaxing flight.  Right.  I think we all know that picture of flying being luxurious went out the door 30 years ago.  Let’s face it, planes today are glorified buses.  It’s more like being crammed into a middle seat, fighting for the armrest with two total strangers, waiting for your bag of peanuts and just hoping you get to your destination within the same day as it was originally scheduled!  Ahhhh, the luxury of modern air travel!

Even with all of the 1st world discomforts of flying, it never escapes me that it’s still a miracle that you can get a metal tube full of people and luggage to go several hundred miles per hour over thousands of miles in a single day.  It takes lots of very talented people- maintenance personnel, flight attendants, booking agents, and, of course, pilots to make that happen. 

Even with all of that teamwork, there’s a consistency that you notice with each flight.  Before it takes off, you’ll see the pilot exit the plane and jet way and do a Walk Around.  The Walk Around is a visual inspection that the pilot makes around the entire plane.  The pilot’s looking for anything that doesn’t look normal.  There’s a simple reason- to make sure everything goes as planned.

A lot of my laboratory customers come to work and their customers expect everything to go right when it comes to delivering sample results.  Like pilots, chemists have a check list, or S.O.P.- Standard Operating Procedure, they follow.  But, why not add a Walk Around to the daily routine.  Sam Youssef, one of our trainers, provided the following list that is helpful to any ICP user:

ICP Walk Around:

1. All methods are not created alike. Optimize your ICP to the conditions of your samples. If you need a different method, that means different ICP conditions.

2. Take care of your sample introduction. This is your MDL and RSD! Most importantly your pump tubing; nebulizer and injector

3. If you are unable to control the ICP environment, do Hg align, or leave initialize optics where it is. Don’t change it.

4. Do XY align everyday… it’s not about hardware. It’s about the most focused light from your sample to the detector. It changes with temperature, Pressure and micro/macro magnetic field.

5. There is a reason the Z alignment is graded 1 to -5: so that you can optimize it for your samples. So, use it.
   

Now, you might not own instruments or, for that matter, work in a lab.  However, when’s the last time you physically walked around your car before you or, your family travelled somewhere?  Wouldn’t it make sense to look at the tires, check fluids, etc. to make sure you arrive safely?  It only takes a few minutes, and, it’s easier than searching for a problem on the side of a busy highway.  Enjoy your vacation this summer.  But, before you go, do a Walk Around!