The following story connects High-Technology laser replacement, covid19 restrictions, and friendly neighbor relationship.

So, we have an Agena Mass-Array analyzer https://agenabio.com. And we have it for some 5 years. And we are very pleased with the performance and the things we can do with it. We like the online applications and technical support we receive from Agena Hamburg. Each year we order a preventative maintenance engineer to come from Germany to check and make sure all is well and we are very happy.

The story begins late, last year, while we realized, together with Agena online tech-support, that the laser of our Mass-Array is working fine but is starting to decrease. Since we can’t take any chances, we immediately ordered a laser replacement, including parts and an actual engineer visit to replace it.The laser replacement part arrived in few weeks’ time.

And then THE global Covid-19 pandemic outbreak arrived. And flights stopped, and lockdowns were introduced and we waited for this situation to end so we can have the engineer come from Germany to replace our laser.

We even convinced a government official person to recognize this situation and to assist us through the restrictions and to allow this special visit. And the people from Agena cooperated with us to send a brave engineer. But this did not work out and in the end in beginning of September 2020 were left with a slowly dying laser and without a special Agena engineer to replace it.

So, desperately I went and knocked on our companies’ next-door neighbor’s door. An optics start-up company named: JOYA https://www.joyateam.com. And I asked: “Is there an optics-laser engineer around?” and Good Yoni immediately asked: “How can I help?”

So just so you know, Yoni never saw this special Agena Mass-Array instrument before in his life. But he is one of the best optics engineers in Israel working years for Elbit. Yoni bravely opened the system and together with an online Agena engineer that instructed him, and some stuff Yoni had to figure out himself.

The rest of the story you can see in the picture and the end of it is that we have now a working machine with a replaced laser.

Stories like this make me happy and proud and grateful for neighbors and Israeli courage and start-up spirit.

Bless you Yoni!