Gamma Spectrometry Forum

Question; how long does your equipment take to stabilize as measured by energy calibration? I am especially curious about NIM setups.

Does anyone just leave their NIM bins on all the time?

Thanks

Jim K

As someone that works on HPGe most of the time, my immediate reaction to the question quite a bit different (long term storage of HPGe warmed up can gradually degrade things) :p

But yes, we generally keep detectors cooled and all often-used electronics are kept on and warm.

However, when I do break out the old NIM stuff for anything, that just comes out of a cupboard and used without a long warm up. Probably we wait a short while (half an hour or so) for things to stabilise if we can, but I've never really noticed issues from pulse processing electronics warming up. Of course, environmental temperature variation of scintillators and PMTs is somewhere where we see temperature effects over time, but that's about controlling (or compensating for) the surrounding/bulk temperature, rather than being something that is solved by waiting for electronics to warm up.

Thanks Joseph!