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- With an agate mortar and pestle
- With a Spex shatterbox
- With a Spex mixer mill (tungsten carbide, hardened steel, agate, or alumina ceramic) (Spex Mill has been replaced by the Retsch400, keeping instruction in this manual until further notice)
- With Retsch MM400 mill (agate)
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The follow instructions are for two mixer mills. Currently only the Retsch400 Currentlythe Retsch400 is the recommended mixer mill to use and it is located in X-Ray Prep . The older 8000M may be stored onboard or sent back to IODP for storage. (Figure 9, Figure 16).or MBIO area of Chem lab.
There are two mixer mills located in X-Ray Prep. Both mills operate very similarly but do have slight differences (Figure 9; Figure 10).
Figure 9: 8000M 8000 mixer mill. (A) Safety latch (B) Minute timer (C) Seconds timer (D) Start button (E) Pause/Stop button (F) Timer countdown LCD display.. An older simplified version of the 8000M. Featured are the safety latch, timer dial, and start/stop button in the middle of the dial.
To operate the 8000 mixer mill, turn the knob to the desired time and press the "Start" button in the middle. That button will also stop the mixer mill. The dial does not move automatically, so if it is turned to 5 minutes it will stay there. The dial does not need be set back to 0 to work.The 8000M timer uses 2 buttons to adjust the minutes (Figure 9B) and seconds (Figure 9C), 2 separate buttons to start (Figure 9D) and manually stop (Figure 9E), and counts down time on the LCD display (Figure 9F).
Grinding Vessels
There are three types of grinding vessels available for the 8000M mixer mill: alumina ceramic, tungsten carbide, and hardened steel (Figure 11). Tungsten carbide and steel vessels are better for more robust grinding, and alumina ceramic is better for minimizing contamination. Check with the Science Party to see which vessel type is preferred.
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Retsch MM400 mill
Figure 16: Retsch MM400
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Figure 17. Agate grinding jars and ball.
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