What did you buy today? Post your latest purchase!

[Tepe]

Didn't you read the Dymo label on the scope? 

[iso]

I'm donating the quadrupole and one turbo to my university's mass spectrometry lab (Ho Ho Ho!).

I'm very envious. Working turbos _with_ matching controllers are almost impossible to come by.
Something you should do RIGHT NOW - cover the turbo inlet ports with about 4 layers of clean alfoil, wrapping it tight around the edges. Just leaving those ports open to settling dust from the air is a disaster. Oh, and DON'T give in to temptation and touch the blades with a finger to 'see if they spin' or whatever. Skin grease, you'll never achieve good vacuum, without giving the pump a serious cleaning with solvents in a vapor phase tank.

Also, what? You are donating one to your university? Why? They have way more money than you. Are those two turbos near identical? You really should keep both, one as a spare. Or are you not aware that it's very easy to kill a turbo with silly sequencing mistakes as you get familiar with vacuum system operation?  Google turbo blade crash images, if you didn't know.

Ditto the quadrupole. If it's just a bare unit sans the entire system it came from, there is near zero chance anyone is ever going to actually use it for anything.

For the rest, I have many plans! DIY mass spectrometry, physical vapor deposition, DIY electron valves, and so on! Having a proper ultrahigh vacuum system opens so many doors.

Re the first one, mass spectrometry, your chances are better if you set up a watch on your uni's chemistry lab dumpsters. Universities tend to just throw those incredibly expensive systems out and buy new ones regularly. Like the HP 5973 mass selective detector I have. Put out in the rain at Monash uni Chem Dept. when they upgraded. Unfortunately minus the controlling PC, software and HP-IB card, and matching gas chromatography unit, which I was told were simply discarded at different times, dammit. My chances of ever getting it going are very slim.

Ok, to be fair, one of the MS department guys is a friend of mine, and he's restoring the exact triple-quad instrument these parts are from, so the assemblies that are specific to that instrument would be a shame to butcher for generic-ish components. I don't really have any use for an octapole collision cell, aside from having it as a cool piece of super well engineered tech.

Turbos are safe, i only took the protection off for the photoshoot. And I'm not spinning it up before I've made a nice 19" rack controller box for it, with gauges for rough vacuum, high vacuum, motor speed and temp. Furthermore, the Pirani gauge i got with it has a set point which will be wired to the kill-switch of the turbo, so if the roughing pump starts to limp, it'll pull the plug on the turbo.

Granted, this might not save the turbo, as it takes it almost 30 mins to spin down from 80.000 RPM to standstill, but it's the best that can be done.

This will also eliminate the risk from accidentally turning on the turbo before the rotary vane pump.



And with regards to DIY MS: Ben fron the Applied Science youtube channel just built a super simple one. I think it could be done one step better with a linear quadrupole (and quad driver controllers are pretty cheap on the ebay)

And yeah, you caught the exact snag with adopting an existing system: very expensive software. I'm still battling with my 30 year old HPLC's win95 drivers.

--Chris

And the sad thing is that Agilent still probably won't give you a job. Turns out they aren't real big fans of tinkerers, or PhD's for that matter. Apparently we're 'too ambitious'. Hopefully the postdoc situation in your country is better than it is in Australia.

[BBBbbb]

Both Eneloops white I said I bought were fake.

I heard that Xiaomi and Ikea AA batteries are OEMed by Eneloop, if that's true, that could be a cheap source.

Ikea for sure, don't know about Xiaomi, but AFAIK that capacity/spec batteries are made in just one factory.

[TerraHertz]

And the sad thing is that Agilent still probably won't give you a job. Turns out they aren't real big fans of tinkerers, or PhD's for that matter. Apparently we're 'too ambitious'. Hopefully the postdoc situation in your country is better than it is in Australia.

Oh hi Iso, you're here!

[Kjelt]

I'm very envious. Working turbos _with_ matching controllers are almost impossible to come by.

Dozens of them were auctioned earlier this year after the bankruptcy of Mapper.
But I had no idea what to do with them so passed on them. Dont even know how to do metal disposition etc.
Is that something you can do at home ? Dont you need a cleanroom? What will you do with it? 

However I bought a Edwards XDS35i  industrial vacuum pump that already had 26000 hrs on it (found out later after pickup) still would go just over $900. New thry are in the $20k i believe. A simple gasket replacement set will set me back $700 so I hope it will last me a few years. It works but also had no caps on the input output.
I have to find some matching hose and adapters and a decent prefilter is necessary i believe. The thing can only go from room pressure to 10mbar five times an hour but can run all day long at 10 mbar , weird devices 
I want to use that one for a diy p&p machine and vacuum table for my cnc mill, I know way overkill but fun.

[iso]

And the sad thing is that Agilent still probably won't give you a job. Turns out they aren't real big fans of tinkerers, or PhD's for that matter. Apparently we're 'too ambitious'. Hopefully the postdoc situation in your country is better than it is in Australia.

Oh hi Iso, you're here!

Yes I am! I do lurk around here to see how the various projects are progressing, good to see when you have some new posts. I should write more often, sorry...

[ChristofferB]

I'm very envious. Working turbos _with_ matching controllers are almost impossible to come by.

Dozens of them were auctioned earlier this year after the bankruptcy of Mapper.
But I had no idea what to do with them so passed on them. Dont even know how to do metal disposition etc.
Is that something you can do at home ? Dont you need a cleanroom? What will you do with it? 

However I bought a Edwards XDS35i  industrial vacuum pump that already had 26000 hrs on it (found out later after pickup) still would go just over $900. New thry are in the $20k i believe. A simple gasket replacement set will set me back $700 so I hope it will last me a few years. It works but also had no caps on the input output.
I have to find some matching hose and adapters and a decent prefilter is necessary i believe. The thing can only go from room pressure to 10mbar five times an hour but can run all day long at 10 mbar , weird devices 
I want to use that one for a diy p&p machine and vacuum table for my cnc mill, I know way overkill but fun.

 The flanges on it are called KFXX flanges, xx being dimensions of tubing in mm. You can get flange to hose barb adapters dirt cheap on the ebay! 
I wouldn't worry about filters for low-crit applications like this.

Metal deposition is certainly possible without a clean room!
Question is just how decent results are. Worst case, making a "clean room bag" glove box full of dry nitrogen coupled to the vacuum chamber inlet as a clean prepping/cleaning zone might do the trick! I'll def. Try.

[TerraHertz]

Speaking of DIY mass spectrometers...

[Ed.Kloonk]

Speaking of DIY mass spectrometers...

Wished I had this device earlier this evening to keep my barman honest. The Bourbon and Cokes seemed to taste a little too sugary. 

[GreyWoolfe]

Fixed a canine related issue today.  The Dumberman (dumb Doberman) keeps knocking the surge protector hung on the front of the workbench off its screws with the weapon of mass destruction that is his tail.   Finally went to the big box hardware store and got a metal 2 gang outlet box, 2 outlets, a wall plate and a male plug as I have a bunch of 14 ga 3 wire left from a bad extension cord.  The box is screwed down tight with multiple screw on the frame of the bench.  Let him knock that off.

[Kjelt]

Metal deposition is certainly possible without a clean room!

Ok , curious what you are going to build with it, ic's ?

[ChristofferB]

Actually the project I'm doing at university is large macrocyclic molecules that are candidates for organic semiconductors and LEDs. Would be cool to be able to demonstrate that.

[Kjelt]

Actually the project I'm doing at university is large macrocyclic molecules that are candidates for organic semiconductors and LEDs. Would be cool to be able to demonstrate that.

Ok that is way past the 1yr Uni chemistry knowledge from 30 yrs ago I have
But if you get something that glows or can be shown, would love to see it posted.
Good luck 

[maginnovision]

Dell D830 at a whopping 2.4ghz dual core and 3 GB ram. 70$ so not too bad.

[rsjsouza]

Dell D830 at a whopping 2.4ghz dual core and 3 GB ram. 70$ so not too bad.

I used a D620 and a bit later switched to a D630, but several friends had the D820 and D830. I loved these computers - they were built to last. Their only major drawback was that Nvidia chipset that had premature failures due to its flip chip packaging

https://www.cnet.com/news/summarizing-the-nvidia-problems-with-laptop-chips-overheating/

[purfield]

I scored a brand new DSOX1204a with 100Mhz BW and all software options for $500 on eBay.  No probes included though...

[Mr. Scram]

I scored a brand new DSOX1204a with 100Mhz BW and all software options for $500 on eBay.  No probes included though...

That's quite a good deal. They're rather sweet little oscilloscopes.

[bitseeker]

That is a good deal. Nicely done.

[Clarmrrsn]

I bought a rather nice looking monitor arm so I can get the 28” lcd off the desk and give me more space for my workbench.

Rather a good price for thrm from Fleabay. Straight from Invision.

Looks a nice bit of kit, gas ram in the arm and adjustable load.

[eti]

A loaf of bread, and no, I won't post a photo.

[maginnovision]

Dell D830 at a whopping 2.4ghz dual core and 3 GB ram. 70$ so not too bad.

I used a D620 and a bit later switched to a D630, but several friends had the D820 and D830. I loved these computers - they were built to last. Their only major drawback was that Nvidia chipset that had premature failures due to its flip chip packaging

https://www.cnet.com/news/summarizing-the-nvidia-problems-with-laptop-chips-overheating/

It seems pretty solid. I cloned the drive to an SSD and made sure it worked then I stripped it down. Cleaned everything and it's nearly like new but I'm still waiting on the bluetooth module and flash cache module so it's still in pieces. The fan runs all the time the nvidia chip has underfill and a heat pipe on it with thermal compound so I think it'll be ok.

[TheSteve]

I scored a brand new DSOX1204a with 100Mhz BW and all software options for $500 on eBay.  No probes included though...

Great deal on a great scope - congrats!

[Rémi]

I bought a HP85662A for 90 euros from France (+ shipping 85 euros ).
Apparently the unit is working fine but the CRT is dim, I plan to replace it with the LCD retrofit NewScope-8 from Simmconn Labs : http://www.simmconnlabs.com/1401/2564.html


 

[Falkra]

Hi, I recognize the seller's pictures (F1*****), I bought from him once.
The shipping is always high, but the parcels are rock solid and the equipment is very well protected.

[Free_WiFi]

ETA Kelvin Clips from Banggood
https://www.banggood.com/2Pcs-Copper-Gwinstek-LCR-Kelvin-Test-Clip-Bridge-Test-Clip-Microresistivity-Clip-p-1043337.html
Orico small bag for instruments
aliexpress.com/item/32990118931.html
Polishing Paste GOI from ebay
https://www.ebay.it/itm/Polishing-paste-GOI-Honing-paste-Plishing-compo-%D0%9F%D0%B0%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B0-%D0%93%D0%9E%D0%98-Russia-20-gr-0-70-oz/263124076627