A furnace degrades as it is used because evaporated material from samples can coat the heating element.

“your furnace will degrade over time, because as you're using the furnace, some of the things you're baking will evaporate and cover the heating element. So every time you use a furnace it gets worse and worse. Uh another issue is like you have a furnace but the temperature isn't perfectly uniform, so where you put in the furnace will affect the result. Uh we we don't have this issue yet, but we will maybe someday. The optical instruments uh suffer a lot from vibrations.”