Home | Mushroom Info | Growing Mushrooms | Archive | General Cultivation | Liquid Culture | Do it yourself magnetic stirrers


This site includes paid links. Please support our sponsors.

Do it yourself magnetic stirrers

by calavera:http://www.



by calavera:
https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php//Number/5585251

1 big computer fan with speed control
4 screws that fits in the fan's four hole
2 magnetic steerer stick's (original)
1 cd case
1 12v power supply for the fan
1 little piece of bluetech

stick one of your magnetic cticks on the center of the fan. screw in the 4 scews. the smaller part of the cd case goes on the top of the screws, adjust the scews until the cover is as close as pissible, but not touching the case.




plug in, adjust the speed have fun!


by
blacklabrat:
https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/5568724

I would like to introduce my new little friend...........



SIR MIX-A-LOT.

OK, Right off the bat let me make it clear that I can take no credit for this. It is an idea that has been ripped off and inspired by several others who have done the DYI magnetic stirrer plate method. It works great, took me less than an hour to make and the best part...it didn't cost me a dime. FREE! Just scraped up a few items I had laying around the house.

Here's how it was done:



~ Started off by mounting the fan to a block of scrap lumber. Connected the fan to the transformer. Originally I was going to add a dimmer switch, but after testing I deemed it unnecessary.

~ Next, I took a canning lid and hot glue gunned it to the top of the fan. Place the magnet in the center of the canning jar lid. Tested placement by plugging unit on to make sure there was no wobble. Hot glue gunned it once the magnet was properly centered.


~Then I cut two blocks of lumber about 1/8" taller than the height of the fan/jar lid/magnet assembly. Mounted these to the side of the fan with glue and screws. Fixed a square of plexiglass to the blocks. This is the base surface where the LC jars sit.

Turned on to make sure that the fan was spinning freely.

Check. Everything is running quiet and smooth

Now I need some stir rods................Hmmm. Ebay? Nah. Screw buying them!
I was now determined not to shell out any cash for this project. After playing around with several ideas, many which were too loud, slow or would require me spending some of my precious beer money .....

I was reminded how sometimes the simplest solutions are the most effective.



A small piece of wire about 1/4" long is quiet, effective and best of all CHEAP!

I tested it by placing a small piece of toilet paper in the jar w/ H2O and with in an hour it had broker it into small fibers.

Yeah yeah. I can hear it now."Isn't the wire going to rust?"

Eventually. But not before the LC is done. They are essentially disposable, costing you about 10 cents per 100!

And there you have it.

How well does it work? Check out the first pic!

It spins like Dorthy in a tornado.

JUST ADDED

Need to warm up the temp of your LC? Try this:

Made one minor improvement to the Sir Mix-A-Lot magnetic stirrer.

I usually do my LC in temps around the high 80s. Currently temps in my neck of the woods are about 20 degrees too cold & I'd rather not put the stir plate in the incubator, so........................



My solution:

I removed the plexiglass base plate and temporally replaced it with a 4 quart lexan tub. The tub is outfitted with a aquarium heater set to 87 degrees and a thermometer. (I realize that the heater is a little too large for this particular application..going to get a smaller one this weekend)
I can now dial in to the exact temp I need.

If you are not sure how to do this, or if you are unsure if the fan/transformer combo you have will work, don't ask me. I'm no electrician. Besides even if I was, you gonna trust an anonymous druggie electrician who posted some shit on the web with your life?
I suggest you read up, use google, use the shroomery search function and take a trip to Radio Shack or a hardware store and ask them. You don't want to go burning your house down or electrocuting yourself. There ain't no fungus worth that!


by
splifner180:
https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/5567819

I should mention that this idea was stolen wholesale from blacklabrat and this thread. Five shrooms for him.

So I've been desperately wanting to have a magnetic stirrer but my $$ was tied up in necessary things like the PC, jars, etc. So when I read that thread I thought to myself "no frickin' way, I have at least five spare fans kicking around this room and probably twice as many power supplies."

And I was right.

So I made myself a working magnetic stirrer using only stuff I had kicking around the room. The only "exotic" thing used was a spare go stone "bowl" (though it's square-shaped). The whole thing from start-to-finish was roughly 30-40 minutes.

Obtaining the magnets are only a problem if you aren't someone who has spare hard drives kicking around as a matter of principle.

Ok, so here it is. The parts all in one spot:



There you can see the enclosure (go stone box), some arbitrary-length garden ties (use string if you want, doesn't matter), the computer fan with the magnet already attached, superglue (not shown), some washers (to stand off the fan from the work surface) and a 12v power supply pinched from a humungous box I have stuffed with such things.

The assembly was simple.

* Match fan up to lid. Use sharpie to mark four holes. Drill holes.

* Strip wires on both the fan and the power supply. Attach. If the fan spins in the "wrong direction" you have the wires hooked up backward but I don't think it'll harm anything if you do.

* Attach HD magnet to the fan. It should stick since it's an extremely powerful magnet and the fan has metal inside. Power up fan.

* The goal at this point is to find the "sweet spot" for the magnet, the placement that will cause the least wobble in the assembly. A millimeter can mean the difference between a kitten purr and the magnet being flung from the fan so make small adjustments.

* Once you find the sweet spot, superglue that mofo down. I didn't bother with the jar lid like blacklabrat did.

* With the fan pointed "up" (the magnet facing up), take one wiretie end and thread it through the fan holes from bottom to top. Take the other end of the wiretie and thread it through a parallel hole in the fan. The wire tie should look like the rope on a swing set and the fan/magnet should be the wood swing itself. The wire tie cradles the fan.

* Thread enough nuts unto the wire tie so that the spinning fan will not hit the lid when pressed against. Sorry no pics for this -- my camera batteries died. Here's a drawing.



* Do the same through the other two holes. Now you'll have four wires cradling the fan with washers dropped over the wire to act as a standoff.

* Place the cover over the fan, threading the wires through the holes you drilled. Twist the ties together to secure the fan assembly to the lid.

* Place the lid over the box. Make a notch for the power wires if you want. I didn't.

That's it. All done. Here is the stirrer in action.



I should have taken multiple pictures. That one does it no justice. There is a righteous vortex in the container right now. The one in the picture is pretty small.

I should mention that there are TONS of ways I could have done this differently. I justed wanted to do it with the items I had on-hand and ...well ...these are the items I had on-hand. It's whisper quiet (calibrating the magnet is critical) and it's been running now for about 80 minutes without so much as a peep.

The stirring rod itself, like the other thread mentions, is just a 1" piece of ferrous (magnetic) metal. I just snipped a bit off a spool of ground wire I had kicking around. Heck, even a small nail might work perfectly. Tomorrow I'll pick up a bit of shrinkwrap to place around the rod. I tried different sizes (I think 1" is optimal) and I tried doing multiple bits of metal (it worked terrible for me, they all clumped together). Tomorrow I'll probably try to attach two bits of metal to polar ends of something non-magnetic, seal with shrink-wrap and see how that works. Who knows?



2 more links:
 diy magnetic stirrer  and another instructional page

Copyright 1997-2024 Mind Media. Some rights reserved.

Generated in 0.014 seconds spending 0.004 seconds on 4 queries.