I’m just an XRay tech. But I would expect at least one whole day, for a pair of engineers to get it running again and re-certified. $20-50K for their time, plus missed revenue from the lost day. Best case could total $100K easy. Way more, if the damage is more than cosmetic.
True. I don’t know how much that is. But liquid helium shouldn’t be “medical grade” really. It’s just a coolant for the superconducting magnets, same as any industrial use.
In my experience the only thing that makes a material professional grade is a paper trail. If something goes wrong and you get sued you want to be able to absolutely prove you didn’t cheap out on any of the materials. It adds a lot of cost to keep batches separate and making sure none of the paperwork gets mixed up. Especially if multiple companies are involved in creating and distributing the material. I work in an ISO compliant shop and we have a lot of folders moving around with different orders, it can be a nightmare keeping everything straight when things are busy.
even if it was quenched the right way: downtime, helium, restarting the entire thing would also cost pretty penny, and maybe replacement of damaged magnet too if that’s what they did
Holy shit, they pulled the emergency release on one of those MRI machines. I think that adds a zero or two to the cost of bringing back online.
I’m just an XRay tech. But I would expect at least one whole day, for a pair of engineers to get it running again and re-certified. $20-50K for their time, plus missed revenue from the lost day. Best case could total $100K easy. Way more, if the damage is more than cosmetic.
More than a day. Ramping can take multiple days, then it has to be conpletely recalibrated and shimmed.
Probably need a new magnet, quenching can melt those puppies. Lot of energy stored in that field.
You’re not counting the materials costs. I doubt that medical grade helium is cheap.
True. I don’t know how much that is. But liquid helium shouldn’t be “medical grade” really. It’s just a coolant for the superconducting magnets, same as any industrial use.
In my experience the only thing that makes a material professional grade is a paper trail. If something goes wrong and you get sued you want to be able to absolutely prove you didn’t cheap out on any of the materials. It adds a lot of cost to keep batches separate and making sure none of the paperwork gets mixed up. Especially if multiple companies are involved in creating and distributing the material. I work in an ISO compliant shop and we have a lot of folders moving around with different orders, it can be a nightmare keeping everything straight when things are busy.
I presume that it has to be certified and probably heavily filtered. It’s not going to be the same as what goes into party balloons.
Liquid helium is -269 °C. There is no risk of confusing it with what’s in balloons.
And its a medical setting which means that the products you use will be certified and calibrated in just the right way.
There isn’t much difference at all.
Yeah, quenching the machine makes bringing it back online $200k+ depending on the system
Yeah, that liquid helium and the MRI down time are super expensive
even if it was quenched the right way: downtime, helium, restarting the entire thing would also cost pretty penny, and maybe replacement of damaged magnet too if that’s what they did