Need help identifying a medical or chemistry supply... thing.
Starhawk wrote 02/11/2018 at 05:32 • 0 pointsStory time.
Once upon a time, in the mid-1990s, at the very very back of Northgate Mall in Durham, North Carolina, there was this weird little shop called The Scrap Exchange where you could fill a paper grocery bag, for $2 sharp, with whatever industrial surplus junk they had on hand. Barrels of "pool noodle" type pipe insulation and old Fujifilm containers and those spiral plastic spring-type binding things for notebooks that Staples will put on your term paper for far too much money. Boxes and bins of mesh and gadgets and bits and bobs and greeblies and all sorts of things that just defied any real description or label. Sometimes fabric remnants or ribbons worked their way into the mix. Occasionally other stuff, sometimes for a little extra. They had cast-off mechanical hamburger presses for $10 once. (I still wish that I'd had $10 that day.) Sometimes a barrel of bad 5.25" floppies would be there. Sometimes it would be full of little plastic pipettes. Sometimes it would have scratched-up laser printer drums. You get the idea. Junk of all kinds, to be re-purposed basically as craft supplies -- hot glue not included.
Last I heard, which was years ago, they'd expanded and moved to a warehouse somewhere else in the city. Google tells me they've moved and expanded again, and now have two locations and are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. I like this news -- that place was cool. Now if only I could get there lol... oh well. Can't have everything, I suppose.
*ahem*
I bought a lot of junk at that place, and -- two houses and almost three decades (!) later -- I still have a little of of it. I need to identify one piece of that stuff, now -- it looks, now, to me to be some sort of sample processing aide of some sort, for either medical or chemistry purposes. I want to get more of them, for a project idea of mine -- I've only two of them left now, after all, and one has a chunk out of it from age and general jostling around. But, thing is, I don't know what the devil to call them. Without a term to feed eBay... I'm kind of stuck.
That's where you folks come in. I hope. Here's a picture of one of these things --> https://imgur.com/a/Qcr6U
If you can tell me what to call that dang thing, some term I can feed eBay that will net results -- I'd be forever grateful...
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Still looking for useful info on this thing...
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It looks like an autosampler carousel. I couldn't find a device that uses that type of insert. If that's what it is, then it's probably for a really old machine that's no longer in production.
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Now THAT sounds like something promising. I really appreciate the specificity.
Do me a flavor... look again for machines that might take it. Your applicable year range is 1994 through 1998.
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I already spent 20 minutes searching - you try.
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+1
It certainly looks like it's meant to hold cuvettes, and the numbering suggests that something automatically indexes the slots.
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Yes, The Scrap Exchange is alive and well, and I recently bought a couple reels of SMD capacitors there. I've no clue what that thing is, though, sorry.
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Have you tried calling them? In my experience with those sorts of places, they're typically run by an old pack rat who will remember where every piece comes from, and regale you with a 45-minute story about it.
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I really don't think that will work here...
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Google needs an option to feed it a image for searching rather than just words....
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They have that. https://images.google.com/imghp?hl=en
You may have better luck than I did. I got "Best guess for this image: plastic"
Then it returned a bunch of plastic things inside boxes. Maybe a better picture would help.
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Thanks Ted, having a senior moment and missed that with Google :-)
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@Dr. Cockroach I had never seen it before, either. I googled on how to google with an image ;-)
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It probably isnt medical, possibly scientific but not for liquid, those holes are square... Not even square, they are sectors. Whatever they contain is irregular and individual. Other than the hole in the centre, probably for mounting, it doesnt rotate mechanically, there are no drive lugs or means of sensing position. It is designed to rest inside a recessed container.
12 positions not 10, there'll be a reason for that too. It's disposable, part of a larger mechanism but that plastic is brittle and weak, it isnt meant to take strain.
I've never seen that symbol before, or even close. It looks like a company logo, it doesnt mean anything symbolically that I can see, if thats an arrow-head its highly stylised.
My guess is a dispenser of some sort for equipment. Dental maybe?
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Regarding the symbol - it IS a logo. I can't remember the company but I've seen it before. I googled quickly for what I thought the initials might be (CFD) and got nowhere. My google-fu is weak (old man) tho so who knows.
There is a tiny lump at well#1 in the center recess... it may well be driven, but at very low speeds. I could see it being used to look at several somethings with a microscope, for example.
The wells have a rounded bottom to them, if that's anything.
I appreciate your detailed analysis. Anything further you can find out is helpful.
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You are most welcome... :-) I will keep looking, I'm terrible for turning up with something months after everyone else has forgotten all about it. Lol...
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Hey starhawk, well..it kinda looks like a top or bottom piece to a packing container that might have housed maybe glass cuvettes or something akin to that, especially since there are #'s and I think that symbol at the center is UR clue.
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I've seen that logo before but I can't place it :(
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There are real-time PCR machines that run samples in a carousel / centrifuge arrangement....I thought this may be one of those but I don't think so now. Hmmm....
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I thought it was a centrifuge tray but it doesn't seem to be
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