I keep a light pliers nearby when I fill, just in case.
http://www.mcmaster.com/#5465a19/
It's steel, so have to be careful around an unshielded magnet.
Large enough to provide some leverage, but small enough that it should not
damage the valve.
Also useful to "start" the valve when it sticks.
Sometimes it's not ice; the person previous closed the valve so tight that
a little leverage is necessary.
Or the valve was cold and then when it warmed up, it expanded and got very
tight.
No matter how strong you are you can damage your wrist when there is a lot
of static friction, you apply pressure and then the valve opens suddenly.
Due to it's layout, the most seemingly natural way to turn the N2 tank
valve is the worst way - to lay the hand on top and deviate the hand
(adduct/abduct or move side to side) at the wrist, which puts too much
pressure on the joint.
When a valve is opened, the least stressful way for your wrist joint is to
keep your hand in position where most of the work is through flexion and
extension of the wrist.
Cheers
George
On 10/28/15 3:34 PM, "Plant,Daniel" <dan_at_mbi.ufl.edu> wrote:
>Hi-
>Yes, it's a bad valve. Make sure you tell the vendor. Try not to break it
>if you use a wrench to close it.
>It may help to use a heat gun on it.
>Seems like if it's going to do this you get an indication in that the
>valve doesn't open as easily as it should (it might make a scrunchy
>noise...)
>Dan
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Ma, Dejian [mailto:dma6_at_uthsc.edu]
>Sent: Tuesday, October 27, 2015 3:13 PM
>To: ammrl_at_ammrl.org
>Subject: AMMRL: Liquid valve is hard to turn off on the liquid nitrogen
>tank
>
>Hello,
>
>It maybe a trivial issue, but I didn't find any post on this issue
>before. The liquid valve on the LN2 tank we received this week became
>very hard to turn off after the LN2 refilling. I had to use a wrench to
>turn it off. Maybe the liquid valve is problematic. Is there anyway to
>know it before the refilling since it's not obvious when turning the
>liquid valve on. Thanks!
>
>Not related to this, I read about the 'Bruker folders' discussion. Many
>of you know that the folder structure of the Bruker NMR data has been
>like it is for 20+ years, from previous XWinNMR to current TopSpin. It's
>actually kind of neat.
>
>Dejian
>
>University of Tennessee Health Science Center
>
Received on Thu Oct 29 2015 - 09:20:50 MST