Replacement Printer for Beckman Coulter LS 6500 Liquid Scintillation Counter

Beckman LS 6500 Liquid Scintillation Counter

The Beckman Coulter LS 6500 Liquid Scintillation Counter features a Motorola 68000 Series microprocessor, a Digital Signal Processor and a 32, 768 channel Multichannel Analyzer and is used by laboratories to detect the activity of particulate-emitting beta radioactive samples and auger electrons emitted by gamma particles, providing a counts per minute output from up to twenty different user programs.

Example Output from Beckman LS 6500 Liquid Scintillation Counter

Traditionally connected to a centronics dot matrix printer connected to the machine’s DB25 parallel port, the printed output allows you to identify contamination levels.  However, as printer technology moves away from dot matrix printers, finding a suitable replacement can be difficult.

Spectrum and Histogram plots can also be sent to the printer to provide an overview of a sample.

The Retro-Printer module acts as a printer emulator and can be used as an interface between the LS-6500 and a printer.  We have previously provided a Retro-Printer module to universities and government departments to allow them to capture the counts output as a CSV file for easier processing, whilst still being able to print the output from the machine on a modern USB or network printer, whilst simultaneously creating a PDF file for electronic copies of the output.  This solution completely replaces the original dot matrix printer with a modern solution, at better value for money, not requiring a dedicated PC, monitor, keyboard and mouse.

If you want to replicate this type of approach to modernise your use of the Beckman Coulter LS 6500 Liquid Scintillation Counter, please get in touch.