Magnet mod. for easier He fills

John Harwood (jsh@samson.chem.uic.edu)
Wed, 10 Dec 97 03:12:26 -0800

Dear AMMRL members,
I apologize up front if this is not interesting or
is old news to any of you. However, I have not seen this
done anywhere else and visitors to our facility (including
an Oxford service engineer) have found it interesting and
useful.
Someone before me at UIC came up with the idea of
installing a gate valve on the helium gas boiloff port on
the magnet. This valve can be easily opened during a fill,
and closed quickly when the fill is over, thus eliminating
the need to remove components and stuff the resulting holes
with Kimwipes or stoppers before a helium fill. This idea
makes helium fills much easier, and safer for the magnet
since the magnet is not open to the atmosphere (almost) at
all.
I recently added a description of this setup, in-
cluding a parts list and some (not-so-great) photos, to
the UIC NMR facility web site. If anyone is interested in
this, I invite you to take a look at

http://www.chem.uic.edu/NMRFAC/nmr115-helium.html

I hope this is of interest.
Regards,

John Harwood

NMR Facility Director
Computational Facility Director
University of Illinois at Chicago
Department of Chemistry (M/C 111)
845 West Taylor Street
Chicago, IL 60607-7061

harwood@hugh.chem.uic.edu