The potentiometers are manufactured by Bourns. You can buy pots with
identical dimensions as a standard catalog item, however the standard ones
have 1% tolerance and the ones Zymark used are 0.5% tolerance. Those are
not catalog items. From what I was told once by a Varian person, the 1%
tolerance is not good enough for the SMS to work properly. Our electronics
guy contacted Bourns and they said they can still make the 0.5% tolerance
pots as a special order. The minimum order is like 100 and the price per
item is a lot higher than the standard catalog item when the quantities
are small. We didn't inquire about lead time to manufacture them, which
could be why they are back ordered until next March ...
There are 4 of these pots in the SMS; the 3 for up/down, left/right, and
in/out are identical, while the rotate-the-wrist pot has different
dimensions.
> Dear Lingchao,
>
>> We have Varian 300Mercury SMS Autosampler for our automation runs. I
>> have two issues about this robot now:
>>
>> 1. When the robot became shaky, the potentiometer inside needs to be
>> replaced. The Zymark potentiometer is now from Perkin Elmer Life (part#:
>> 36816&36817) and it is back ordered until March 2015. Are there any
>> other alternative brands of potentiometer for this SMS autosampler I can
>> use?
>
> I don't have an answer for this (yet) - would be interested in spare parts
> as well...
>
>> 2. Calibration of SMS Autosampler needs MS-DOS Laptop with 9-pin PCMCIA
>> serial card. It also needs floppy driver in the laptop. (Or Toshiba
>> 1800/1850). Our old laptop seems to be crashing very often so I am
>> trying to buy another laptop for replacement. Does anyone know anywhere
>> still sells those old laptops?
>
> You don't strictly need a laptop with PCMCIA serial card - all you need is
> any computer that can run plain MS-DOS, has a floppy drive and a DB9-pin
> serial port. Ebay might have something for you. I guess any 386 (possibly
> 486, not sure) should be OK for this.
>
> Best regards,
> Bert.
>
>
> Magnetic resonance consulting, service, training & more
> Selling & buying used Varian/Agilent NMR equipment
> Dr. rer. nat. Bert Heise
> Owner, Applications Scientist
>
> Spin-Doc
> Kiefernweg 13
> 58239 Schwerte
> Germany
> Tel. & Fax: +33 367 113463 (French office)
> Mobile: +49 171 5135315
> Email: bert.heise_at_spin-doc.net
> Web: www.spin-doc.net
>
> Representing:
> Stelar Fast Field Cycling NMR Relaxometers (www.stelar.it)
> MestreLab NMR Software (www.mestrelab.com)
> Armar NMR solvents (www.armar.ch)
>
>
David VanderVelde
Manager, High Resolution NMR Facility, Caltech
davidv_at_caltech.edu
Received on Mon Dec 01 2014 - 10:00:28 MST