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Author: Subject: Sorvall SS-3 Centrifuge
BeanyBoy
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[*] posted on 9-4-2007 at 02:43
Sorvall SS-3 Centrifuge


I picked up a Sorvall SS-3 centrifuge for basically free last week. It came with the GSA rotor, 6 rubber sleeves for the rotor, and three "Oak Ridge" bottles. With the rotor removed, it will spin up. When cranked up all the way, the tach says its doing 12k but its supposed to top out at 20k RPM.

The motor isn't making the smooth sounds I'd like to hear, but has an oscillation in it: aaaa-ruh, aaaa-ruh, aaaa-ruh; hard to describe in ASCII. It smooths out somewhat after running for a while.

With the rotor inserted, it did finally spin up, but blew its rear-panel breaker, but not quickly enough, as it also blew the 20a breaker for the distro circuit from my load center (fuse/breaker box).

I pulled the brushes; I really don't know if these are too worn or not. If anyone out there has experience with these or other big-assed centrifuges and can tell by looking, the brushes can be seen here: http://members.iglou.com/dougq/SorvallBrushes.jpg

If I can fix it, its probably for sale, even though there may be all kinds of cool uses for it. I just imagine I could get more mileage out of the glassware & reagents I'd buy from the hopeful proceeds... but before I get lost in the milkmaid's tale, I gotta fix it...

[Edited on 9-4-2007 by BeanyBoy]
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Magpie
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[*] posted on 9-4-2007 at 10:48


Those brushes look perfectly fine to me and have a lot of wear left on them, ie, all that carbon.



The single most important condition for a successful synthesis is good mixing - Nicodem
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BeanyBoy
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[*] posted on 9-4-2007 at 13:20


Quote:
Originally posted by Magpie
Those brushes look perfectly fine to me and have a lot of wear left on them, ie, all that carbon.

All I could find on the net were line drawings of replacement brushes for some other models... but in each case, the length of the carbon element in the drawing of the replacement brushes was about the same as the carbon on these. So yeah, I thought these looked ok...

Armatures appear to go out on these. Seeming so do the speed control daughterboards. That's probably the culprit...
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