Date: Tue, 11 Jan 94 12:59:40 HST
Subject: SX-50
From: "Tom Hulsebosch"

John, I've made a few minor changes to the CAMECA letter in
response to suggestions from Mike Drake. I dont think the changes require
re-distributing the letter.

I have received only one more reply to my fax inquiries. Mike Dorais
(doraism@indiana.edu) wants to be included in the users group, but does not
want his name on the letter to CAMECA. He says that he is very satisfied
with the service that he has received and that the problems he has had
with QuantiView are relatively minor. This seems odd to me since A. Basu was one of the first people to endorse the letter?

Mr. Claude Conty
Marketing Director
Cameca Instruments
103, Boulevard Saint-Denis
BP-6, 92403 Courbevoie
Cedex, France

Dear Claude,

The purpose of this letter is to notify Cameca of the
formation of a Western Hemisphere SX-50 Users Group and to share
with you the results of an initial meeting in San Francisco on
December 6. The primary mission of our group is to share
information (e.g., methods developed and solutions to common
problems). We hope to work with Cameca in the distribution of
this information for the greatest benefit to all current and
future SX-50 owners.

We should emphasize initially that the SX-50 electron
microprobe is an excellent machine. However, like all
sophisticated instruments, it has occasional problems. In this
brief letter, we would like to document, in a general way, some
of the most bothersome problems that some of us have experienced.
Others of us may have been fortunate enough not have had the same
severe level of problems, but nevertheless agree that there are
improvements that Cameca should consider.

Some of us have experienced considerable downtime (many
weeks) due to a lack of prompt and knowledgeable response to our
request for help. This is extremely frustrating. This
frustration hurts us and Cameca. As you must be aware, Cameca
does not enjoy a uniformly good reputation for service in North
America. We understand that this has been a major factor in some
recent lost sales. Thus, we would hope that Cameca will endeavor
to improve its service reputation. We note that Cameca has
recently hired a new (albeit apparently a novice to the SX50)
service engineer, which will hopefully alleviate problems with
response time for west coast SX-50 owners. Some of us feel that
a better solution (which we understand existed in the past) might
be to have engineers off the platform in Courbevoie rotate here
to service our SX50s.

This raises another concern that some/many of us have, which
is the perception that there is a communications problem between
Cameca Inc (U.S./Canada) and Cameca (France). While internal
corporate operations are none of our business, it is our business
to have prompt and knowledgable service, and not to feel that we
have gotten lost in some trans-Atlantic foulup.

We have a few suggestions for service improvements, such as
providing owners with a schedule for routine maintenance similar
to the one given to new car buyers. A clock that logs "HV Hours
On" would be very useful for determining maintenance intervals.
This is especially important for those of us that cannot afford a
full-service contract. Some of our group members have learned of
a few of these needed procedures by accident after costly
repairs.

Another concern is the lack of a demo SX-50 in Stamford.
While a demo machine is no panecea, there are at least two
service benefits: parts could be tested before they are shipped
(some of our group members have received defective parts from
Stamford) and parts from it could be borrowed when they are not
otherwise available in Stamford (an all-too-common problem). We
are sure there would be many other benefits to Cameca of having a
demo machine in Stamford.

Software. Many of us purchased a Cameca microprobe because
of its advanced software. However, when we started using the
software, we experienced many problems. Initially, we were told
that those problems were unique to our individual labs. However,
we soon began to speak to each other and discovered that many of
us had the same problems. Quantiview is potentially a powerful
software product but it has many serious bugs. Some of us have
documented those bugs to your people (and now, as an organized
users group, we will try to do so in a more consistent manner).
We have been told that new releases of the software would address
these problems. Although some bugs have been fixed, some (and
sometimes major ones) remain and some new ones were created.
There are several different versions of the software in
circulation, but there is little or no communication from Cameca
to the owners about these new releases unless we complain.
Some of us have have heard rumors that Cameca is developing
a new microprobe with completely different software. Is this
true and if so, will the Sun-users be abandoned (like the
DEC-users were) when the new system becomes available? We are
not surprised that some of our DEC users are buying independent
software that is intrinsically superior to CAMECA software.
We would like a realistic timetable for future releases of
Quantiview and SunRay, and a list of the planned modifications.
We understand that the software is complex, that fixes and
modifications are time-consuming, and that priorities must be
made. We would like to be involved in providing input to Cameca
by furnishing a consensus (of our members) of what are the most
important fixes and modifications in the future. We also hope
that Cameca will seriously consider providing more resources to
deal with the apparent overload in the software department.

We hope this letter will initiate a frank dialogue between
our users group and Cameca. We hope it is received in the
spirit with which it is sent, of a desire to work together to
improve the SX50, for the benefit of all of us. We look forward
to receiving your response, which should be sent to Mike Garcia
(Univ. of Hawaii). He will distribute it to the other group
members.

Sincerely,

Mike Garcia, U. Hawaii
Tom Hulsebosch, U. Hawaii
Brian Patrick, UCSB
Roger Nielsen, Oregon State
Mike Drake, U. Arizona
Chris Capobianco, U. Arizona
John Shervais, U. So. Carolina
John Fournelle, U. Wisconsin
John Valley, U. Wisconsin
Peter Schiffman, UC Davis
Abhijit Basu, Indiana U.
Ed Vicenzi, Princeton
M. Whitehead, CF Minerals