The crate lands on a Tuesday. Your staff want to switch it on, and somebody has already pencilled a client in for Thursday. Slow down. The few days between the forklift and your first treatment are the only window where a shipping claim, a missing certificate or a bruised handpiece is still somebody else's problem. Miss that window and each one turns into a line in your own budget. So here's the sequence, in order, ending with the clauses that make it stick.
Delivery Is Not Acceptance
Two separate events, and your contract should treat them that way. Delivery is the crate reaching your door. Acceptance is you signing to say the machine performs as specified. Collapse them into one and your bargaining position evaporates the day the truck arrives.
Our own warranty and support terms start the twelve-month clock the day you receive and accept the machine. That's the right way round. Ask every supplier on your shortlist where their clock starts, because if it starts at shipment you're funding weeks of ocean freight and customs clearance out of your own cover.
The practical form of this is payment staging. Deposit at order, the bulk against shipping documents, and a retention held back until an acceptance protocol is signed by both sides. It doesn't have to be a large retention. It changes how quickly the phone gets answered.
The Unboxing Inspection You Only Get One Shot At
Film it. Phone camera, one continuous take, crate seals and any shock or tilt indicators first, then the lid coming off, then each item as it comes out. In a dispute it's the difference between a paid claim and a long argument.
Work the accessory list, not your memory. Manuals in our engineering archive ship with a counted list: display unit, connector, screws, articulated arm, spot adjustor, interlock shorting stub, mains lead, foot pedal, two keys, protective goggles for both operator and patient, funnel and filling tube, spare coupling heads, and the packing list itself. Tick every line. A missing shorting stub isn't a nice-to-have spare; without it the console won't fire at all, and you'll spend a day convinced the machine is broken.
The parts that arrive hurt
Transit damage clusters in predictable places. Articulated arms, scanning handpieces, foot pedals, anything heavy or hinged or hanging. Our CO2 installation documentation states that the transmission system leaves the factory calibrated and shouldn't be re-aligned by unauthorised hands, so an arm that took a knock inside the container is a service call, not a Saturday afternoon project. Move the arm through its full range. Check that the scanner seats and locks. Look at the output lens under a torch, at an angle, for chips and coating scratches.
The after-sales chapter in that same documentation excludes the scanner, foot switch and articulated arm from free warranty service, and excludes mail costs too. The components most likely to be hurt in transit are often exactly the ones a headline warranty doesn't cover, which is why your inspection window matters more than your warranty length. Full platform specifications sit on the individual product pages; the exclusion list sits in the contract, and only one of those two is negotiable.
Speaking of windows: our manuals ask customers to report any problem within 24 hours of opening the package. That's tight for a clinic taking delivery on a Friday evening. Negotiate an inspection period you can actually meet, put it in writing, and don't lean on goodwill to stretch it.
Everything You Check Before the Key Switch Turns
Match the supply, then buy fuses
Compare the rating plate to your wall socket before the plug goes anywhere near it. Our manuals are blunt about this: a three-pin outlet with a proper ground is mandatory, and the mains voltage has to match the device.
Find the fuse holder while you're behind the cabinet. On this class of console it's a pull-out carrier beside the mains inlet, and the documented replacement is a 250V/10A fuse. Unstable supply is what burns it. Buy a strip of spares during commissioning, tape them inside the cabinet door, show your senior operator where they live. Where mains quality is poor, a voltage regulator upstream is cheaper than an emergency call-out.
Site conditions belong in the same pass. Our installation notes want a stable, ventilated position between 10 and 40 degrees Celsius with relative humidity no higher than 80%, out of direct sunlight, away from radiators, ducting and mechanical vibration, in a low-dust room. Dust does irreversible damage to internal optics.
Fill the cooling loop properly, once
Water gets rushed, and rushed water kills lasers. The documented procedure on one of our Q-switched consoles: purified water through a funnel into the refill port until it runs back out of the overflow, roughly 1800 mL, with the coupling head left in the overflow while the machine runs. Our e-light platform notes add the step people skip: run the machine for about five minutes after the first fill, shut it down, then top up, because the loop takes in air the first time. Distilled or purified water only. Tap water leaves scale where nobody can reach it, and the running-cost consequences of that are laid out in our piece on what a laser system really costs to own.
Prove the safety chain, don't assume it
Class 4 medical lasers carry a defined set of engineered safety features, and acceptance is when you confirm each one exists and works. In the US those requirements sit in the federal performance standard for laser products at 21 CFR 1040.10. Internationally the equivalents are IEC 60601-2-22, the particular standard for surgical, cosmetic, therapeutic and diagnostic laser equipment, alongside IEC 60825-1 for classification and labelling. Translated to the box in front of you: a key switch that leaves the machine dead when the key is out, an emergency stop that genuinely stops emission, an interlock connection, an emission indicator, and a stand-by state the console returns to between patients.
Test each one on purpose. Hit the emergency stop mid-session and confirm it drops. Pull the key and try to fire. Break the interlock. If your treatment room door is wired into it, and OSHA's guidance for laser treatment areas expects a controlled area with warning signage on every entrance, open the door mid-standby and check the machine responds. Two keys shipped for a reason. One stays with the person responsible for the room, not in the lock.
Checking Energy Without a Calibrated Meter
The screen shows what you asked for. It doesn't show what left the tip. Those two drift apart over the life of a machine, and they can be apart on day one. The honest answer is a calibrated power or energy meter, and if you're running a busy list you should either own one or budget an annual verification visit.
Burn onto test paper. This isn't improvisation; it's the start-up procedure in our fractional laser documentation, which has the operator wait out the laser's warm-up, test on paper to confirm the equipment is working and stable, and only then go near skin. Wooden tongue depressors give you a coarser but more visible mark at higher energies.
What you're reading off that paper is mostly geometry and repeatability. Is the spot round or oval? Are the edges clean? Is the burn even across the whole spot, or is there a hot core with a cold rim, which points at an optical problem rather than a power one? Does the tenth shot at one setting look like the first? Does the mark grow the way you'd expect when you step energy up? Run three energy levels on every spot size you own, write the settings beside each mark, date the sheet, file it. That paper is your baseline. Every future complaint that the machine feels weak then gets measured against evidence instead of somebody's memory.
Read the shot counter too. On a genuinely new console the total should be a modest factory-test number, not thousands. Log that figure on the acceptance protocol next to the serial number. It's the only chance you get to establish where the count started.
The Paperwork That Should Be in the Crate
Documents are far cheaper to demand now than to chase in month eight. Hold these in your hand before you sign:
- User manual in a language your operators actually read, with the parameter tables and maintenance intervals intact.
- Packing list and warranty card. Our after-sales terms require a warranty card or valid proof of purchase before free service is granted, and an incomplete or altered card is grounds for refusal.
- Type-test documentation: electrical safety and EMC test reports, plus a signed declaration of conformity naming the standards the unit was tested against.
- Labels physically present on the machine, not just in the file: classification and warning labels, aperture label, and the identification label carrying manufacturer and date of manufacture.
- Eyewear rated and marked for your wavelengths. OSHA's laser guidance expects protective eyewear marked with optical density and wavelength; unmarked goggles are decoration, and a dual-wavelength platform needs protection across both lines.
- Spare parts list with unit prices and lead times, plus the warranty exclusion list in writing rather than in a sales conversation.
Those papers sit in three layers and answer different questions. A type-test report and a declaration of conformity are the product safety layer: evidence the unit was built and tested against named standards such as IEC 60601-2-22 and IEC 60825-1. In the US, 21 CFR 1040.10 is a radiation safety layer governing how a laser product is constructed and labelled, which is not the same thing as FDA marketing clearance, granted per model and per intended use through the 510(k) route. Ask the supplier to state in writing the number covering this model in this configuration, rather than accepting a verbal claim that the platform is FDA certified. In the EU, a CE mark carried on a medical device route shows the notified body's number on the label; a self-declared CE mark is not that route.
Market entry is a separate stack. Who registers the device locally, who holds the technical file, and which national rules govern operator qualification are all decided by your own regulator, not by your supplier. Meeting IEC or CE requirements is not permission to switch on for a paying client, which is the conclusion our cost piece reaches too. ANSI Z136.3, the health care laser safety standard, is worth reading alongside it, because it covers installation, calibration and maintenance rather than treatment alone. Need the technical file for a specific configuration? Ask us for it, and check what your regulator wants in parallel.
Paper, Then a Test Patch, Then a Patient
The ramp in our treatment documentation stays consistent across platforms: warm up, confirm on test paper, run a low-energy trial on a small area, then treat. For Q-switched pigment work the guidance is to start low and take three to five shots while you watch how the tissue answers, adjusting until you find a working energy for that patient. Fractional protocols put the trial on the inner forearm at low energy while pattern, spot density and interval get dialled in.
Test patching stays a clinical habit long after acceptance week. Our archive recommends a small trial area, roughly half to one square centimetre, before committing on a pigmentary lesion, because a proportion of patients pigment up afterwards. That risk isn't evenly distributed. Darker phototypes carry more of it, and post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation is the common own-goal on a new device with unfamiliar settings, so treat conservatively while your team learns the console. None of this is medical advice; it's commissioning and procurement background, and clinical judgement stays with the treating clinician.
Book the trainer for this stage rather than for delivery day. Get sign-off recorded per operator, with the parameters they were trained on, and keep it with the acceptance file.
What to Write Into the Contract
Everything above is worth more once it's contractual. Fix these before you pay:
- Acceptance defined as a signed protocol after successful commissioning, not as delivery and not as a bill of lading.
- An inspection and damage-reporting window you can meet, stated in working days, with photographic evidence accepted.
- Warranty period starting at acceptance, with the exclusion list named item by item and freight direction stated for both legs of a warranty repair.
- The full delivery document set listed as a condition of acceptance, so a missing conformity file counts as a missing deliverable.
- Named consumables and wear parts with prices held for a defined period, plus a guaranteed spares availability window after end of production.
- Operator training hours, location and per-head cost for future hires, signed off by name.
- A retention balance released against the acceptance signature, not against the shipping date.
Run this list against any platform you're comparing, ours or anyone else's. A supplier who'll sign it is telling you something useful. So is one who won't.
Frequently asked questions
How long should acceptance testing take?
Plan two or three working days between uncrating and your first paying client, not two hours. Unboxing and the accessory count take an afternoon. Power-up, water fill and the safety chain checks take another session, partly because the cooling loop wants a run-and-top-up cycle. Energy checks on paper plus operator training fill the rest. Rushing this is how clinics discover a damaged handpiece in week three, when the shipping claim has already expired.
Can I refuse a machine after it's already installed?
Depends entirely on what you signed and when. If your contract defines acceptance as delivery, your position weakens the moment the crate is opened. If acceptance is a signed protocol after commissioning, you keep grounds to reject or to demand rectification. Take the wording to your own legal adviser for your jurisdiction.
Is burn paper good enough to verify laser output?
It's a relative check, not a calibration. Paper tells you whether the spot is round, whether energy spreads evenly across it, and whether one setting reproduces the same mark today and in six months. It won't confirm the machine delivers the joules on the display. That needs a calibrated power or energy meter, either your own or a scheduled service visit. Use both: paper often, meter on a fixed interval.
What if a certificate or test report is missing from the crate?
Don't treat the first patient until it arrives. Missing conformity documents create a problem with your insurer and, in many markets, with your regulator, and they get much harder to obtain once the balance has been paid. Hold acceptance, request the file in writing, give a deadline. A manufacturer with a real technical file can send it the same week.
References
- 21 CFR 1040.10 - Laser products, federal performance standard for laser products (eCFR)
- IEC 60601-2-22:2019 - Medical electrical equipment, Part 2-22: particular requirements for surgical, cosmetic, therapeutic and diagnostic laser equipment
- ANSI Z136.3-2024 - Safe Use of Lasers in Health Care: installation, calibration, maintenance and operation of health care laser systems
- OSHA Hospitals eTool, Surgical Suite: Laser Hazards - eyewear optical density marking, controlled area signage, laser plume
- IEC 60825-1:2014 - Safety of laser products, Part 1: equipment classification and requirements
- FDA - Premarket Notification 510(k): clearance granted per device and per intended use
- Regulation (EU) 2017/745 on medical devices - CE marking and notified body involvement