It takes SO LONG

 Why does it take so long?! An entire 8.5 hour shift can be wiped out doing monthly maintenance and the monthly pipe. 

- Clean basically everything with varying levels of wash, water, or alcohol. Nothing like shooting 50ml or 100ml of clean solution / water down each drain. 

- Replace the little PC/CC cups on the e side. 

-Poke a little cleaning q tip through each hole of the incubator on the e side. plonk plonk plonk

- Liquid flow path clean 

-If you're a heavy use lab you change out the cells and clean the bath, maybe even change the electrodes and their tubings (we did every month regardless because of high use)

-Pool some serum and prime the above electrodes and tubings :( Save that serum for the green rack clean/prime. 

-Hope to god the new cells pass their check when it comes back up 

-Reagent up/down error? UGH. Why is the probe stuck in the ALP pack again??

-"FATAL FUSE ERROR or you just didn't lock the hood of the 501 side properly. But I won't tell you which one so you have a heart attack instead"

By the end of the shift, you just might be able to start calibrating and QCing. Maybe. Better get it done by 4am, if you perform maintenance on 3rd shift. Morning rounds are coming and you don't want to be trying to baby an instrument all the while trying to load up the other instrument with morning draws. 

There are some decent videos on Youtube of how to do maintenance which is nice I suppose. I definitely still miss working with Siemens Vistas back in the day. What a user friendly dream.