Maintenance
You can expect several years of useful lifetime for your tip if you wash
it daily. Use a syringe or vacuum to pull water, then alcohol three times
through the tip. If the Perfusion Pencil tip is filled with pure salt solution,
leaving it in the syringe overnight will not usually cause the tip to block.
However, if it is used for high viscosity fluids, flushing after each use is
recommended.
Cutting the Pencil tips
The removable tips are shipped with 1.5” (3.8 cm) length polyimide
needles. They are intended to be cut to a desired length by rolling a razor
blade on them against a hard surface. However, this may leave a small
crack or barb on the tip. To get a flat cut, score the coating of the needle
with a ceramic cleaving stone or a diamond cutter and pull directly apart,
making sure not to pull at an angle. You may notice a larger outer tube
enclosing the lower part of our smaller, 100 µm needles. This is simply for
added rigidity and can be cut if needed
.
Max Temp LED
The ThermoClamp is equipped with a warning light to warn you of a high
temperature inside the heater. If the "Max Temp" LED lights during use,
it means that the heater has reached its maximum temperature. This is
not necessarily a problem. All AutoMate devices are designed to operate
indefinitely at Max Temp. The LED may illuminate while heating a cold
perfusion chamber or cold perfusate. The Max Temp circuit will reset itself
once the temperature drops. You do not need to do anything.
Here is an example of a Max Temp situation. If you leave the bath
thermocouple sitting on a cold table while the ThermoClamp is running,
the controller will think that the bath temperature is significantly below
your setpoint. It will apply heat to the Pencil, but will not observe an
increase in the “bath” temperature. It will continuing heating the Pencil
indefinitely. The Max Temp Safety sensor automatically stops heating the
Pencil and lights the indicator LED once the Pencil reaches a user-defined
maximum.
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