Oregon State University Upgrade

Peter and John upgraded MSCL-S #38 at Oregon State University in time for its next sea going operation starting in late September. The system is housed in a sea going laboratory container and has seen many years of use on numerous research expeditions since 1998.

When not at sea it is maintained and used at the OSU Marine Geology Repository in Corvallis. The major upgrade included replacing the old belt driven track with a more precise and powerful ball screw driven track section, computer, electronics and P wave system. The new integrated P-wave electronic and software systems enable users to record and display all the waveform information. Bobbi Conard (the facilities assistant curator) said the upgrade to the system, will make it much easier for users who were not so experienced or knowledgeable to set up, monitor and subsequently evaluate good and bad P-wave data. Later in the year OSU will upgrade their existing MSCL-CIS imaging system to the new MSCL-XZ system enabling split core measurements to be made (magnetic susceptibility, colour spectroscopy and XRF) as well as core imaging on a compact bench top machine.