Thrifty Scientists Explore Alternatives To Buying New Tools

In 1984, the department of earth sciences at St. Cloud State University, Minn., was lacking an electron microprobe. At the time, the instrument, used to analyze the com- position of rock samples, was selling for about $200,000. Gary Anderson, a professor in the department, knew that there was no way to justify the expense. "A small department like ours, in a public school such as St. Cloud State, can't afford [to spend that much money] on a single piece of equipment," he says. By being at the right place at the right time, however, Anderson managed to acquire--practically free of charge--a 20-year-old electron microprobe, courtesy of the United States Department of Energy (DOE). While on a trip to a DOE facility in Ames, Iowa, Anderson saw that the instrument was on a list of devices available through DOE's Used Energy-Related Laboratory Equipment Grant Program for Institutions of Higher Learning (ERLE). This program, begun in 1962, makes several hundred used instruments available to the educational community per month to further energy-related research and coursework. DOE donates the equipment to successful applicants, who pay only a shipping and handling charge. "We absolutely wouldn't have the microprobe [without the ERLE program]," says Anderson. "There's no doubt about it." With the accelerating cost of technology in the microprocessor age causing the price of laboratory equipment to skyrocket, more and more scientists like Anderson are exploring economical alternatives to buying instrumentation new. The small college without funds, the struggling startup without much capital, and the new researcher who lacks adequate funding support are renting or leasing lab equipment, buying it used, or looking for ways to obtain it at no charge. And as equipment manufacturers and government agencies like DOE begin to recognize researchers' need to squeeze more science out of fewer dollars, many are teaming up with the financially strapped investigators to help them obtain the tools they need at a price they can afford. Help From The Government Few scientists were aware of DOE's ERLE program until 1985. Before then, researchers had to travel to DOE facilities to see the monthly listing of available equipment. In 1985, however, the Energy-Related Laboratory Equipment Catalog was created. The catalog, available monthly through the U.S. Government Printing Office, lists all the ERLE equipment to be offered the following month. The listing can also be accessed by anyone with a computer and a modem through an online database called the Eligible Equipment Grants Access Data System, or EEGADS. The ERLE program is organized on a first-come, first-served basis. Researchers affiliated with a college or university who are interested in obtaining a piece of equipment they find in the monthly catalog or on the database must wait until the first working day of the month to call the phone number given in the listing for the instrument. The investigator who is the first to inquire about a specific tool can "freeze" the equipment, making it unavailable to anyone else. Names of the second and third callers interested in that instrument are placed on a waiting list. The caller who "freezes" the instrument submits a short application to DOE describing how the tool's use will be energy-related. If the application is approved, the caller is sent the equipment. If the application is not approved, or if the caller no longer wants the equipment after his or her application has been approved, the second person on the list is called right away. Each piece of equipment is offered through the ERLE program only once; if it is not claimed by a college or university researcher, it's offered first to other federal agencies, and then to state surplus outlets. According to Larry L. Barker, ERLE program manager at DOE's Office of University and Science Education Programs, applicants' projects have to meet only a very broad definition of "energy-related" to qualify. "We consider a first-year chemistry course energy-related," he says. In addition to the electron microprobe that Anderson obtained, St. Cloud State's earth sciences department has acquired an oscilloscope and one or two other small instruments through the program. But John Porter, an assistant professor of biology at Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science, has not been lucky enough to obtain equipment through the ERLE program. "I've tried it, but never been successful," says Porter. In order to be the first caller to request an instrument, speculates Porter, who has tried to take advantage of ERLE about half a dozen times, "you better be [on the phone] at five o'clock in the morning when they open up the lines." DOE's Barker acknowledges that some users become frustrated when told again and again that they are the second or third caller for a piece of equipment. "The people who succeed in this program are the ones who persevere," Barker says. Industry Lends A Hand Pursuing another avenue, a scientist doing cutting-edge research can sometimes obtain instrumentation at little or no charge from companies seeking to develop their products in new directions. Nikon Inc., the optics firm based in Garden City, N.Y., has formalized this kind of arrangement through its Partners in Research program. Under the program, begun in the summer of 1989, Nikon lends equipment to scientists and provides technical and, sometimes, financial support as well. The most important part of the program, says Lee Shuett of Nikon's Instrument Group Scientific Department, is the exchange of information between the scientists and Nikon's engineers and development personnel: Nikon lends the equipment to the researchers and donates technical expertise. In return, the scientists agree to share information about what they're doing. Nikon uses this information to improve its products and to expand its markets to include investigators doing similar work. Stephen Morris, professor of molecular biology at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, received help from Nikon in developing a new kind of video microscope to study the activities of living cells using very low light. His real-time fluorescence microscope, built using parts borrowed from Nikon, splits light from living cells in two, allowing two separate video cameras to image simultaneously two different emission wavelengths. The images are then digitized and combined computationally with an AT computer. Morris first approached Nikon a year and a half ago with his new design for video microscopy. The design used several components whose development Nikon had announced, although the company had not released them. "I convinced them to loan me the prototype for evaluation," he recalls. When the evaluation turned out well, Nikon lent Morris more equipment to build the complete system. "They were very, very good about doing this," says Morris. "They trusted me with several thousand dollars' worth of new equipment." Nikon, however, decided not to market Morris's microscope. Instead, the device is marketed by Analytical Imaging Concepts of Roswell, Ga. Analytical Imaging Concepts gave Morris free software in return for permission to market his system. Leasing And Renting With the cost of scientific equipment rising steadily every year, leasing has become another attractive alternative to purchasing new equipment outright. "Years ago, you could purchase an endoscope for $5,000 or $8,000," says John M. Tabone, credit and lease financing director for Olympus Corp.'s Scientific Products Group. "Now you're talking upwards of $100,000 for the same equipment." Olympus, the optics company located in Lake Success, N.Y., has recently established a new commercial credit division for its Scientific Products Group, allowing scientists to lease Olympus products directly from the firm, rather than from independent leasing companies, whose rates may be higher. "Leasing is an attractive alternative for young companies, those that are starting and have small amounts of capital," says Larry Garretson, organics manager at Analysys Inc. of Austin, Texas, a young environmental testing company that leases equipment from Quantum Analytics Inc. of Foster City, Calif. Quantum leases and rents gas chromatographs, spectrophotometers, and other analytical equipment to researchers and the environmental testing industry. "We're looking at maybe $250,000 worth of equipment that we can lease for, say, $3,000 to $4,000 a month," adds Garretson. "It makes a huge difference in your cash flow." Leases generally span two to five years, allowing scientists to ease the financial burden of purchasing expensive equipment by spreading the cost over an extended period. The typical lease carries no service agreement and does not allow early return, says Beneta Evans, sales representative at Quantum. Rental agreements, however, are usually short-term, come with a full service agreement, and may or may not include a purchase option, says Evans. Most of Quantum's short-term rentals are to large environmental engineering firms doing mobile lab work that need a backup system or an extra system for a special project, she says, though there are other reasons to rent. "Sometimes a company has already blown their budget for this year for purchase items, [but] they need the equipment," explains Evans. "So in September they'll say, `I need a six-month rental with equity because at the beginning of the year I'm going to buy it.'" Secondhand Tools Scientists who do not wish to rent or lease their instruments and who have been unable to obtain free equipment from government or corporate sources might want to consider the option of buying used devices. Several vendors of scientific instrumentation sell used equipment in addition to new tools. Buck Scientific Inc. in Norwalk, Conn., for example, sells used infrared, atomic absorption, and gas chromatography equipment, along with its own line of new instruments. Unlike brokers, who purchase used equipment and sell it as is, sometimes making minor repairs, Buck Scientific is in the "remanufacturing" business. The firm rebuilds instruments to meet the manufacturer's specifications and sells the equipment with a six-month warranty for about half the price of a new unit, according to company president Bob Anderson. He agrees that the high cost of technology is the reason many scientists now seek alternatives to buying new equipment outright. "Most of the instrument companies, because of economic conditions, have gone up-market," the Buck Scientific president says. "They have made a $6,000 instrument into a $26,000 instrument by putting all kinds of bells and whistles . . . on it, and it really hasn't improved the instrument any, but it has improved the price quite a bit." He explains that the "big companies have such a horrendous overhead that they have to sell an instrument for $20,000 or above today to make a profit." Oldies But Goodies Although the economic advantage is the major reason for buying used equipment, it is not the only one. "We get a lot of business from customers that have run a piece of equipment in their last job or at their school," says Bob Anderson. "They know it will do the job and they want the same piece of equipment." But customers often find that the instrument they want has been discontinued by the manufacturer and replaced with a newer model with which they are unfamiliar, often sporting features they don't need. If they want the machine they know, they have to buy it used. This is particularly true of computers, says Alexander Randall 5th, founder of the Boston Computer Exchange and coauthor, with Steven J. Bennett, of Alex Randall's Used Computer Handbook (Microsoft Press, Redmond, Wash., 1990). According to Randall, many scientists are interested in purchasing IBM AT machines, which the company has replaced with its PS/2 line. Scientists who already have several AT computers in their laboratories often find that they can reduce compatability problems and save a lot of "configuration trauma" by sticking with the AT, Randall says. According to Randall, a used computer made by IBM or one of the other well-known manufacturers sells for about the same price as a discounted new machine from a "no-name" company. Used computers are bought and sold on the trading floor of the Boston Computer Exchange in much the same manner as stocks in New York and pork bellies in Chicago. The exchange charges the seller a 15 percent broker's fee for arranging the transaction. The Boston exchange is affiliated with approximately 120 local exchanges around the world. The Boston Computer Exchange database is available on the Compuserve and Delphi online services. Local computer exchanges can be found in the Yellow Pages. The secondhand computer market is technology-driven, Randall says: "Computers tend not to wear." If a scientist doesn't need state-of-the-art number crunching, he says, used computers in the laboratory work well and keep working for a long time. Scientists using high-tech instruments often stay away from used equipment, however. "With electronic [equipment], one tends not to buy secondhand stuff, because electronics has a finite lifetime, after which it's effectively unrepairable," says Tony Hyman, a postdoctoral researcher in pharmacology at the University of California, San Francisco. But mechanical devices, such as microscopes, are a different story, he says. Hyman's department was able to purchase several used microscopes from a dealer. "They had some trade-ins which were reconditioned which we took off their hands," he recalls. "That saved us some money." Independent repair shops are often a good source for used instruments, says Hyman, but, he notes, "secondhand equipment is not a very easy thing to come by," because there is no formal source of information on available used instruments. "Nobody advertises it or calls us up" to announce the availability of devices, he says. A significant amount of time and effort is required to track down used equipment, according to Porter of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science. "Negotiations with another institution which has something they can't use may take five, six, seven meetings over a period of several months' time before you have a done deal," he says. "Finding something used, but not over the hill, is difficult." Locating used equipment is often a matter of asking around and keeping one's ears open. Porter says he hasn't had a lot of luck finding secondhand equipment "from people who specialize in that sort of thing." More often, he says, a faculty member, talking casually with a colleague from another institution, will discover that an instrument is lying fallow in a laboratory because the scientist who used it got a job somewhere else. "There's a network out there," says Porter, "but you're not always plugged in where you need to be when you really need something." The money saved by buying secondhand equipment varies widely. "It can be quite substantial or zero," depending on how much service an instrument requires, says Porter. Demonstration models purchased from a dealer can cost about one-third less than a new instrument, he says. Porter's department has done well buying atomic absorption equipment that way. However, unexpected costs can lower the value of secondhand equipment. "The greatest place we've run into trouble [obtaining used equipment] is the actual transportation," says Porter. Two ultracentrifuges that his department recently procured at no charge from a nearby institution were damaged in transit and are now just occupying space. Another time, the department was offered a scintillation counter by a local company but declined to take it because the transportation cost was too high. But in spite of these problems, "on balance we've come out reasonably well," Porter says. Even new equipment, he points out, may last only two or three years before requiring service. Although obtaining secondhand equipment is time- consuming, Porter says, finding enough grant money to buy new equipment "is certainly time-consuming as well." Bruce Silver is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia.

Thrifty Scientists Explore Alternatives To Buying New Tools

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