Liquid Helium Delivery for Imaging Sites
Helium sourced and delivered to your site anywhere in the continental United States. FDM handles both the delivery and the magnet fill, so product is not sitting on a dock boiling off while everyone waits on a crew. One point of contact for the gas and the labor, not two vendors. Veteran-owned.
Out of Helium Allocation?
Helium is genuinely constrained, and allocation is how suppliers ration it. When yours is gone it is gone, whatever the reason you need more. We work with more than one supplier, so we can chase whoever actually has product rather than being held to what a single contract has left, and price it against more than one quote. Call 615-479-5572. Call or text 615-479-5572, email service@fdmenterprises.com, or use the form on this page - whichever is quickest for you. Please reach out as early as you can - the options narrow and get more expensive as the level drops.
Your allocation is spent for the year
The most common call we get. Allocation is set against contract volume, and once it is used the answer from a single supplier is simply no. That is not a scheduling problem you can talk your way around, it is a contract limit. It is also the exact situation we exist to solve.
A quench, planned or otherwise
A quench empties the magnet. The refill volume is far beyond anything a routine allocation was sized for, so sites that quench almost always blow through what they have left. Call before you have the number, not after.
The cold head has failed
Once the cold head stops, the magnet is on passive boil-off and the clock is set by the magnet. You need product and a crew on the same day, not a purchase order cycle. See cold head replacement.
Chiller or cooling water failure
The compressor protects itself and shuts down, and the cold head stops with it. Sites often log this as a facilities fault and lose days before anyone connects it to helium being consumed the whole time.
An extended power outage
Building power out for longer than the system rides through means the magnet reverts to its passive boil-off rate for the entire outage. After a storm, every site in the region is calling the same suppliers on the same morning.
You have no supply agreement at all
Sites that buy once or twice a year have no allocation to run out of, which sounds simpler until you need product. Without an account you are behind every contract customer in the queue.
Supply Problems We Hear About
Allocation Is the Real Constraint
Helium supply is genuinely tight, and suppliers ration it by allocation. Allocation goes to contract customers first, so a site that buys once or twice a year sits at the back of the queue and finds that out during an outage. We work with more than one supplier, which is what lets us find product when one says no. See MRI liquid helium fills.
Helium is allocated, and allocation goes to contract customers first. A site that buys once or twice a year sits at the back of the queue, and finds that out during an outage rather than before one.
Too small and you are paying for a second mobilization. Too large and you are paying for product that boils off before it reaches the magnet. Sizing is set by the magnet and by how much room the fill actually has to make up.
A dewar sitting on a loading dock is losing helium every day it waits. This is the most common and most avoidable way a site pays twice, and it happens whenever supply and labor are booked by two different people.
A closed-loop cryocooler recharge needs ultra-high-purity helium gas at 99.999 percent. A magnet fill needs liquid. They are different products on different paperwork, and ordering the wrong one costs a trip and a delay.
Rural sites, mobile units, and facilities a carrier does not routinely serve get quoted long lead times or quietly skipped. Distance is a schedulable problem if it is known in advance and an outage if it is not.
Demurrage accrues on cryogenic containers nobody arranged to return. Sites are often surprised by a charge on a job they considered finished months earlier.
Where a Delivery Goes Wrong on the Day
Product On The Dock Is Not Helium In The Magnet
A dewar waiting for a crew is losing the product you already paid for. Delivery and labor get booked as one job, with the site access, the route into the equipment room and the container return all settled before the truck rolls.
A cryogenic container has to physically reach the magnet. Loading dock height, door widths, elevator capacity and the path through the department all decide what can be delivered, and none of it is visible from an address.
The delivery needs a person who can sign for it and a place to put it. Weekend and evening arrivals fail on this more than on anything else.
Sites are expected to have working oxygen deficiency monitoring where cryogens are handled. A monitor out of calibration or dead can stop a fill on arrival, after the product has already been delivered and billed.
The quench pipe and vent route are not something to discover a problem with on fill day. An obstruction found at delivery turns a scheduled fill into a facilities project.
Supply windows are weekday shaped. A cold head that quits Friday afternoon is a Monday delivery unless somebody arranges otherwise, and those three days come straight out of your helium.
A PO cut after the outage starts adds days to the outage. Sites that set up terms before they need product are the ones that get served first when they do.
How Delivery Works
Tell us the site and the timing
Magnet make, model and field strength, the delivery address with dock and elevator access, your current helium level, and the window you need to hit.
We source and size it
Liquid or ultra-high-purity gas, how much, and in what container. We quote delivered, not product only, so there is no freight surprise at the end.
Delivery is scheduled against the work
The product lands when there is somebody there to receive it and, if we are also doing the fill, somebody there to use it. That is the whole point of booking both through one place.
Containers go back
Empty container return is arranged as part of the job so demurrage does not accrue on something everyone has forgotten about.
Frequently Asked Questions
We arrange supply and coordinate delivery to your site. If you already have product on hand, we can work with what is there instead. Either way you get one point of contact for the gas and the labor rather than two vendors pointing at each other.
Liquid helium goes into the magnet. Ultra-high-purity gas at 99.999 percent, sometimes called 5.0 grade, goes into a closed-loop cryocooler circuit after work that opened it. Different products, different containers, different paperwork. Ordering one when you needed the other costs a trip.
It moves with the market, and with volume, container type and distance to your site. We quote delivered rather than product only, because the delivered number is the one you actually pay.
It depends on your site and the product. A planned fill should be booked well in advance. An emergency is handled as an emergency, but you pay for the urgency in both price and options, which is the argument for watching the trend.
Yes. Some sites have their own crew or an OEM agreement and only need product on the dock at the right time. We will schedule the delivery against whatever window your people give us.
Anywhere in the continental United States. Product travels further than a crew does, so a site we would not routinely send an engineer to is still one we can get helium to. Call 615-479-5572 with the address.
Magnet make, model and field strength, the site address with a note on dock and elevator access, your current helium level, and the timing you are working against. That is enough for a real number.
That is worth a conversation, and the time to have it is before an outage rather than during one. Tell us your system, your usage, and how you are monitored today, and we will look at what makes sense for your site.
Tell us the site and we will quote it delivered
Request a delivery quote
We reply by the next business day.
Helium Delivery Nationwide
Liquid helium and ultra-high-purity gas are quoted delivered anywhere in the continental United States. The states below are where FDM also runs MRI, CT and contrast injector service directly.