Finally! Another company has built an Orbitrap system!

For years and years and years we've waited for this to happen.

US7714283B2

USUS7714283B2

US7714283B2 and GB2434484B were filed during my first year of grad school. Not to brag, but that was a long fucking time ago and patents and trademarks, regardless of how many excuses you make for extensions, don't last forever. 

Someone who actually knows about these things told me after....a responsible number of drinks.... that one of the primary reasons Alexander Makarov hasn't been seriously considered for a Nobel has to do with the fact one company exclusively owns this and has made $e9 off of it. Now, I might have gotten some details wrong and he/she might have been incorrect during this conversation about a decade ago.  But, you can't convince me the Orbi doesn't merit a medal in Stockholm and with the monopoly broken, maybe it finally happens? 

One of the primary reasons I've heard for why the vendor isn't concerned is due the the sheer difficulty in machining the Orbitrap to specifications. Even the vendor has a high failure rate, and used to have a failure rate high enough that you could win imperfect Orbis at some conferences. In the era of the Motorola Razr, people were making Orbitraps. Can it really be THAT hard in 2022? 

I guess not, because I just got schematics from a company called Veridian Dynamics on the first externally developed Orbitrap sytem, and at first glance it might be too amazing to believe. 

You know how there have been rumors forever of replacing the ion trap in a Tribrid with another Orbitrap, or two, or three, but it has never materialized? 

Hold on to your hat, partner. What about 4? 

Introducing the SLE9D-MS System! 

This design is the brain child of Dr. Ben Neely who has secretly been leading the design of this hardware for a couple of years. 

SLE9D-

Soft 

Landing

Electrophoresis

9 dimensional. 

Mass spec. 

Unnecessary(?) edit 4/4/2022? So....umm....this was totally an April Fool's joke that has some largely unintentional synergy that somehow made it even more funny.