Dr. Patrick Camus, Director of Research and Innovation, EDAX
The beginning of the new calendar year is a time to reflect and evaluate important items in your life. At work, it might also be a time to evaluate the age and capabilities of the technical equipment in your lab. If you are a lucky employee, you may work in a newly refurbished lab where most of your equipment is less than 3 years old. If you are such a fortunate worker, the other colleagues in the field will be envious. They usually have equipment that is much more than 5 years old, some of it possibly dating from the last century!
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| Old Jalopy circa 1970 | EDAX windowless Si(Li) detector circa early 70’s |
In my case, at home my phone is 3 years old and my 3 vehicles are 18, 16, and 3 years old. We are definitely evaluating the household budget this year to upgrade the oldest automobile. We need to decide what are the highest priority items and which are not so important for our usage. It’s often important to sort through the different features offered and decide what’s most relevant … whether that’s at home or in the lab.
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| Octane Elite Silicon Drift Detector 2017 | Dr. Pat’s Possible New Vehicle 2017 |
If your lab equipment is older than your vehicles, you need to determine whether the latest generation of equipment will improve either your throughput or the quality of your work. The latest generations of EDAX equipment can enormously speed up throughput and the improve quality of your analysis over that of previous generations – it’s just a matter of convincing your boss that this has value for the company. There is no time like the present for you to gather your arguments into a proposal to get the budget for the new generation of equipment that will benefit both you and the company.
Best of luck in the new year!
I wonder when instrument manufacturers will start leasing their products to customers so that it gets easier to get an upgrade. Is that an idea EDAX has thought about yet?
Maybe the older instruments could even be much better recycled (and many parts re-used) when they are not “that” old actually?
In fact, many manufacturers, including EDAX, offer equipment leasing options. I am surprised more customers don’t take advantage of it. Leasing offers customers to acquire the most up to date equipment without needing a capital budget request. They can be structured as operating leases or finance leases.
An operating lease is often structured over 3-5 years with a 10% equipment buyout at the end of term. The customer can choose to either return the product and upgrade to the newest technology, or they can choose to buy out the lease and keep the equipment. Leases of this style are most often budgeted as an operating expense – averting the painful capital equipment budget process.
Finance leases are meant to offer customers an easy way to pay for equipment when cash flow is challenging. Finance leases are structured from 24 to 60 months and at lease end $1 buys the equipment.
Leasing scientific equipment is not unlike leasing a car. You can get into an equipment lease with little money down, and have all the benefits of ownership. Like a vehicle, maintenance is the customer’s responsibility. In cases where the customer wants no service liability during the lease term, there are options that allow maintenance agreements to be rolled into the lease that cover the equipment for the full term.
I hope this answers your questions on leasing. If you have any further questions, and for rate quotes – contact your local salesperson.