I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw this. The glass blower who made the manifold has missed the point. Five excellent high vacuum taps combined with a rubbish Teflon tap to produce a nice a shiny low vacuum manifold. Speaking of missing the point check this set up out using the same manifold. Spot 5 mistakes. D! 
Yikes, this kind of makes me cringe! The way those stopcocks are oriented...yikes. And I have a feeling the flask of material shouldn't be above the main line...that's a good way to collect junk in your main line (know from personal experience).
ReplyDeleteIs that regular plastic tube or silicon tube?
ReplyDeleteRead the box in the background...
ReplyDeleteClown Scientific!!!
one of my stopcocks like in the picture is ruined. How do we fix it? Any suggestion for what kind of super glues should we use? Or where could I just buy a new one?
ReplyDeleteI don't think that tap was intended to block the atmosphere from a high vacuum manifold, or he'd have just closed the end.
ReplyDeleteIf it was going under vacuum, it's backwards, and there should be something like a Cartesian diver on the other end.
Or it may have been intended for positive pressures.
All of the major glass people sell manifolds that can have barbed inlets / outlets connected to either end for bubblers et al.
With a decent manifold costing thousands a piece, it's a bit much to let undergraduates loose on one of those as their first go with vacuums.
I do agree though, it looks foul and it's not going to be fun cleaning it.
I wouldn't use this for low pressure, but I've used similar manifolds to deliver a nitrogen blanket to multiple simultaneous reactions. They are nice because you can seal them individually when you need to sample or if you are done with a reaction. I usually keep them connected to a mineral oil bubbler as well as connecting to nitrogen flow tubes.
ReplyDelete