Montana University System:

Service Rate
Arctica (hr)    $70
Arctica (day) $300
Spirit (hr) $20
Vitrobot (hr) $8
Technical Support (hr)   $50

External Academic:

Service Rate
Arctica (hr)    $105
Arctica (day) $700
Spirit (hr) $80
Vitrobot (hr) $8
Technical Support (hr)   $90

 

Commercial:

Service Rate
Arctica (hr)    $175
Arctica (day) $1,700*
Spirit (hr) $125
Vitrobot (hr) $25
Technical Support (hr)   $125

 

* 10% discount for 10 or more days per year

The Cryo-EM Facility uses online Outlook calendars to manage instrument time and scheduling. Scheduling time on the Vitrobot and on the Tecnai Spirit requires the user to be pre-approved by the facility. Once pre-approved, time can be scheduled on-demand. For the Talos Arctica, all users require approval from facility staff.

Availability

Talos Arctica

We are currently allotting 24 hours, Mondays at 12:00 PM to Tuesdays at 12:00 PM, for screening time. Screening time is intended to provide a reliable weekly opportunity for groups to spend a 2-3 hours at the Arctica examining the quality of their samples. Grids that are loaded into the microscope during screening time will be removed Tuesday at 12:00, and should be assumed to be unrecoverable. Please send screening requests to [email protected] by end-of-day Thursday, the week before.

For longer data collections, please make a reservation. Reservations can be made from Tuesday at ~12:00 to Sunday at ~midnight. Please note, users whose data collections end on a weekend will be responsible for cryo-cycling the microscope at whatever time their data collection ends.

Please note: both screening requests and reservations are not necessarily first-come first-serve - effort will be made to balance access to all necessary groups, as well as accommodate external and commercial users, users who have traveled to the facility, and so forth. For further details, or exceptional circumstances, please reach out by email. 

 

Tecnai Spirit

Tecnai Spirit scheduling can be done on-demand by pre-authorized users with no interaction or approval required, provided the instrument is free. However, if reservering for time less than 48 hours from the point of reservation, please contact the facility to confirm the microscope is actually free. For non-authorized users, please contact the facility for initial training first.

 

Vitrobot

The Vitrobot scheduling can be done on-demand by pre-authorized users with no interaction or approval required, provided the instrument is free. Please reserve a minimum of two hours per freezing session. For lots of grids, please request more time. For non-authorized users, please contact the faciliity for intial training first.

Scheduling Time

Currently, sharing calendars as a link is not operational. Unfortunately, users must log in to Outlook Web with their MSU credentials, and manually add the calendars for the instruments:

How to add a calendar in Outlook web

To schedule time on an instrument, create a new event on your own calendar, and add the instrument as the location:

How to add an event