I am a new engineering technician for an optical coating company and am working to understand our equipment and capabilities. As part of this effort, I'm looking into calibration for the several Cary spectrophotometers we own.
I understand the Carys do an automatic calibration on start up. Agilent recommends in their manuals, restarting the Carys monthly and performing the Instrument Performance Test suite to ensure results meet specification. I'm not familiar with the specifics of the automatic calibration on startup. Does anyone know if this is a sufficient test or if a separate 3rd party calibration should be performed on a regular basis? I wasn't able to find a recommended calibration period anywhere other than the monthly restart, and the nature of the calibration using a known light source made me question if a separate calibration were even necessary.
Any help or information in this area would be helpful.
Thank you,
Andrew