Allied Telesis 6870 manual Placing Vials in the Freezer/Mill Coil

Accessory Packs can be placed in an insulated container to hold the vials upright during chilling. At the same time, chill an impactor separately. As soon as the submerged end of the vial is chilled, drop in the cold sample and then the chilled impactor. (Always wear insulated gloves when handling chilled vial components directly!) Now carefully insert the other end-plug, still warm, into the warm end of the cylinder. The vial can now be carefully placed in the mill, or submerged in a liquid nitrogen bath outside the mill, as long as you are careful not to let the sample touch the warm end plug before it has cooled down.

Very important: never force an end plug (warm or cold) into a cold polycarbonate cylinder. Polycarbonate shrinks when chilled, and can crack if stressed. When you follow this procedure for loading cold samples, if the cylinder has cooled to the point where the end-plug fit is too tight, warm the end of the cylinder before inserting the end-plug.

6.25 Putting a Very Small Sample in the Vial and Keeping it Cold

A variant of the loading technique in 6.24 can be used to grind very small samples with the open pre-chilled vial upright. Place the sample on the chilled end-plug and add a small amount of fluid such as an extraction medium or water. The frozen fluid will bulk up the sample enough so it will circulate in the vial during grinding. To speed up this process with Small-sized vials like the 6751, some users first prepare small “ice cubes” of the sample frozen together with 0.5 ml to 1 ml of fluid.

6.26 Placing Vials in the Freezer/Mill Coil

Before placing a vial or vials in the 6870 Freezer/Mill, put on cryogenic gloves. Unlatch and lift the lid of the mill, and open the coil gate. If you are running Small or Mid-Size vials make sure the proper Adapter is in the coil. Pick up the vial(s) with your gloved hand or an Extractor/Vial Opener and insert the vial(s) in the coil. Close the coil gate and tighten it against the vials(s) by turning the gate handle clockwise, but do not overtighten the gate. Lock the gate by folding down the handle.

If you have additional vials you wish to pre-cool, pick them up the same way and insert them in the pre-cooling compartment of the coil housing. Check the liquid nitrogen (LN) level and top it off if necessary. Gently close the Freezer/Mill lid, and latch it. Latch the lid shut. You are now ready to run a grinding program, as described in Section 5.

6.3Removing, Opening, Emptying, and Cleaning Freezer/Mill Vials

6.31Removing Vials from the Freezer/Mill

At the conclusion of the grinding cycle, unlatch the lid and let the gas cylinders lift it. Do not force the lid, but allow it to rise at its own speed. If the gas cylinders are too worn or chilled to lift the lid, lift the lid gently.

Remove the vial or vials from the coil, using gloves or an Extractor/Vial Opener. At this point you may want to shut the lid to conserve LN or insert another vial and begin another grinding cycle.

Page 17 of 25 SPEX SamplePrep LLC 9.24.07