Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Hotplates - Bite the bullet and go Chinese?

weeksie98 - 13-4-2014 at 08:54

While searching for a decent heat source to replace my kitchen hot plate, I have been scouring eBay. The only decent looking hot plate stirrer on eBay is the IKA RCT, and even that has a circular, metallic and quite small stage as opposed to a Corning. The irritating thing is, however, that in order to get a Corning I would have to get one from the US and buy a transformer. That is out of the question. So should I bite the bullet and get one of the Chinese ones listed on eBay? It must be able to heat to 350-400 Celsius and have a stirrer and decent stage size, preferably ceramic.

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

thesmug - 13-4-2014 at 10:38

I thought Corning hot plates had a little thing to switch between US and EU mains (like on computer PSUs). If not, I don't see an issue with that Chinese hot plate.

murgs - 13-4-2014 at 23:06

Listed on ebay is a couple of bright orange mag/stirrers made in england and they heat up to 500c,I think they are from Maple scientific.They are expensive compared to chinese but good warranty and looks and sounds like a good unit.

adamsium - 14-4-2014 at 01:58

My thoughts on the cheap Chinese hotplates:

https://www.sciencemadness.org/whisper/viewthread.php?tid=24...