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Orbital shaker for degassing SG samples

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When we invested in an EasyDens SG meter we started to investigate the best way to degass samples for it and found many articles referencing orbital shakers.

So, lets build one!

Using a microcontroller (Arduino), a stepper driver board and a small stepper motor the following was produced with the help of 3D-CAD (Solidworks), a 3D-printer (Formlabs) and a CNC-mill (custom built).

3D CAD of the setup
Parts CNC-milled from Plexiglass
Motor mount and coupling 3D printed in SLA
The electronics
And of course we wanted some carbon fibre parts as well. The magnets are for holding the sample jar in place.
End result!
The “baffled Erlenmeyer flask” recommended by the literature (made out of the bottom of an 250 ml PET bottle) is held in place by magnets.
Slowmotion video of the agitation!

The literature recommends 12 minutes of agitation and that is what we do.

The system works like a charm and uses about 15ml samples! Now we can take a sample every hour if we like 🙂

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