Stains on hotplate

I guarantee you will stain the hell out of your hotplate anyway, why does it matter if it is stained?
I have no idea how to remove them, by the way.

The kitchen is your friend:

How much Pd are you missing? If this is insignificant, I say fuggedaboutit.

Quote: Originally posted by mr.crow

So my palladium solution splattered all over my hotplate and now it has brown stains that are impossible to get rid of.

Quote: Originally posted by spirocycle

thats the fanciest stain I've heard of in a while. "Oh no! my palladium splattered EVERYWHERE!" [Edited on 20-10-2010 by spirocycle]

And NOW all my diamond grit is in the grout lines on the floor!

Nah, but I agree with the others, it's GOING to get stained if you're using it.

Mine has reached points where the entire ceramic top was virtually black with gunk. By simply turning it up all the way to full and leaving it running for a few hours, I've come back and found it virtually spotless, as the heat has burnt the organic muck off.

They'll do that with glassware in some organic labs. When washing doesn't work, stick it in the furnace, turn it up and go home. The heat burns anything organic off and it comes out nice and clean.

[Edited on 28-10-2010 by peach]

Worrying about stains on a hotplate is about the same as worrying about acid holes in your lab coat. If there are no holes and stains your not a chemist.

You should see my underpants.

As soon as I find the camera, I'll get you a picture.

There are more holes in them than a piece of swiss cheese. I always wear the same pair when doing chemistry for the acid reason.

I'm actually having a bit of a competition to see if I can genuinely wear out a pair of underpants. When they become illegal or fall apart, I'll feel all sad inside. They've been good friends, and I feel their time is nearing.

Underpants and legality are a major concern for me, as I often don't wear any and have been around very large groups of school kids on a frequent basis. As such, forgetting to do my zipper up could result in a serious criminal charge that wasn't even intentional.

If you're worried about mess on the hotplate, you can always cover the top with foil. If you cover the hole thing, you'll melt the casing or overheat it. And if it's permanently covered with wrinkled, mucky foil, where's the gain there?

I bet loads of the guys who buy IKA plates new never use the things in case they get a bit of muck of them.

So many chemicals will massively stain things on a drop or two of them making contact, it's basically going to happen. I've managed to stain PTFE stir bars pitch black without too much trouble.

Our chemistry labs at school paid hundreds and hundreds of pounds each for chemically resistant bench tops that were theoretically unstainable. Sure enough, they eventually went down, after one of the staff members spilled some form of concentrated iodine solution on it and it wouldn't come back out.

It was funny watching the pedantic inogranics teacher scrubbing at it every now and again, hoping it'd go away again. It didn't.

[Edited on 29-10-2010 by peach]

Quote: Originally posted by peach

You should see my underpants.

The United State Postal Service, the US version of the Royal Mail, usually has the lowest prices. Far lower than UPS. It's easy to use as well because they do the standard box sizes now. "Will it fit in this box? Does it weigh less than 2kg? Which country is it going to? It's this much." Far less messing around.

I've had quite a bit shipped transatlantic with them and it's been great. They used to offer the 6 week ground service for really cheap postage, but that's been stopped now I think and the cheapest is 2 weeks (I think...).

Charges, you don't want to live in the UK then! When a box full of hundreds of pounds worth of things turns up from the US, the VAT and Duty on it can be eye watering. It used to be worse because the Royal Mail would turn up at 7.33am and immediately want £94.72 in cash. "Yeah... let me just check my pocket... nah, haven't got that to hand" as I rub the sleep out of my eyes.

The biggest problem for my hotplate has been the pots (the variable resistors on behind the dials). Reactive gases have gotten into the casing and seem to have ruined the tracks. I suspected something fishy as afoot with it months ago. Then I finally bothered to try using the software that came with my datalogging pH / temperature meter and drew a graph for a flask of water I had on the plate.

I tried turning the heating up one increment at a time and noticed that not only was it not anywhere close to a straight / smooth line, it was changing fk'ing sign! Going from hotter to colder as I raised the number on the dial.

Anyway, fixing that will be as expensive as soldering some new pots on. But it wouldn't have been a problem if they'd stuck some little 1p o-rings over the shafts as they put it together, which I will do in part 2, the long needed clean up and fix up it's been deserving.

IKA plates will be even worse for that, as I think those use rotary encoders for the dials, which are quite a bit more expensive than pots. Hopefully, they've actually sealed the shafts to the casing. If not, that's a joke considering the price tag.

{edit - the Royal Mail}
I love the RM, but their parcel section, Parcel Force, is odd. The RM was privatized and then locked into providing standard RM services / charges, I believe they're being freed of this, this year. The idea was to drive the costs down. But, ironically, Parcel Force has continued charging £15 as a flat starting rate on all parcels, whereas I can get the same thing shipped for £7 by many, many other couriers. So.... ruin the RM, retain prices that are double everyone else's? If they don't drop, in half, this year or the next, it's going to die. There is also some odd things going on with regards to what you call the shipment. I quoted one guy £75 to ship some guitar pickups to him as a parcel through parcel force. When I went to post them, she said "Send it as a packet, it'll be £1.70". That's getting on for two orders of magnitude difference in price, make your mind up!

[Edited on 31-10-2010 by peach]

Quote: Originally posted by peach

You should see my underpants.

.. er ?

we have, old boy

the brief, and tastefully lit, glimpse provided by your youtube lithium spectra production