Thoughts on CAD, Designs, and 'Betas'

As you may know, Veritas is heavily involved with hyphenated methods from TGA-IR to UV-Rheology. Many manufacturers don’t actually supply the connections to allow hooking techniques togerther, so recently we ended up designing a UV cover for one of our DSCs.

We should note that even when a manufacturer does supply a “turnkey” system, it often severely limits the operation of the unit. Electronic furnace covers can’t close, autosamplers can’t be used, temperature ranges may be restricted. So considering what they cost, it’s often worth while to design or make your own.

Deciding we could be clever, we made a prototype in plastic (Yay, 3-D printers) and took that to a machine shop. Two trips later, it’s a perfect fix and works well. Except for acting as a heat sink. We need to shorted the piece that inserts into the furnace so that we can add a layer of ceramic insulation.

Sadly, at least for this bunch of chemists, CAD design did not eliminate the beta versions, but it did shorten the time hauling a design drawn on a napkin used to take.