Process and apparatus to automatically refill evaporation apparatus
AssigneeHarvard Bioscience, Inc.
InventorHerbert J. Hedberg
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A fraction collector, sample drier that automatically re-fills sample contains is described. Profiles of RPM and/or back EMF decays as a rotating but unpowered rotor comes to a stop are generated. The profiles may be generated for rotors with full, partially filled and empty sample containers. During a drying operation as the non-volatile samples are collected by evaporating the liquids more sample may be loaded while the rotor is spinning. The operation is to unpower the mechanism and measure the decay profile of PPM and/or EMF over time. A threshold may be set so that the lighter rotor will stop more quickly, and if the threshold is crossed the mechanism will load more sample into the containers.
Claims7
A process for detecting when to automatically re-fill containment tubes housed in a rotor, the process comprising:
- generating slow down decay profiles of the rotor bearing containment tubes, the respective profiles corresponding to the containment tubes having different amounts of sample and being based on speeds of rotation of the rotor over time when power is removed from a motor attached to the rotor;
- setting a threshold for directing the re-filling of the containment tubes based on the profiles, the threshold corresponding to a particular amount of sample in the containment tubes;
- and
- determining that the containment tubes are ready to be re-filled if the threshold is crossed after power is removed from the motor attached to the rotor.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.