Source for centrifuge bottles?

I recently got an insane deal on an older IEC Centra 8R centrifuge (25 bucks!) and after a full weekend of decontamination and cleaning have been searching for a good source for bottles. Is there a website that has decent prices and lists info on the size of the bottle (not just capacity but measurements of the physical size). The recommended bottles are no longer produced. It's a swinging bucket rotor so I have some flexibility on size but I want to find something as snug as possible for the bucket.

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SteveM_20803

I used the Nalgene website to find my rotor and then the recommended bottles. Made the purchase at Amazon. I don't know if this will work for you but it is worth a try.

lfmichaud

Congratulation on your new toy!

I use a Beckman TJ-6 centrifuge with 3 liters swinging buckets. This is about the same kind of specs as yours. I had the same kind 0f problem finding bottles. (They were more expensive than the centrifuge!) You can use sous vide bags for some applications but the best thing i found was disposable containers like this

http://www.ziploc.com/Products/Pages/TwistLocContainers.aspx?SizeName=Medium%20TnL%20-%2032%20ounces

You can use a dremel tool to remove the part of the rim that prevent you putting them in the buckets but it work well and is very cheap. After many hours of spin they can crack and start to leak but that's the best solution I found. So go shopping with one of your buckets for disposable food container but don't even think at glass!

Good luck

grandpa.yum

thanks for the advice! On the Ziploc containers do you notice any deformation after spinning? I'm not terribly worried about this because my centrifuge is on the slower side (max speed is about 3000G and given the relatively unknown state of the rotor I only spin about 1000G, rather be safe and take longer than push an older rotor past it limits) so I'm nowhere near the 20k+Gs that ChefSteps and Modernist Cuisine are doing.

The problem with the Nalgene site is that my IEC is older (mid to late 1980s) so the rotor is mostly unsupported by modern manufacturers. However I can take measurements of my buckets and I have the manual that specifies max height for bottles so if I can find a source that lists precise measurements I can hopefully find something reasonably similar.

grandpa.yum

I ended up purchasing some Nalgene bottles from Fisher Scientific that should work okay. The IEC apparently has it's own specific sizing for bottles (wider bottoms and shorter bottles). I have some tube adapters that came with it that I may try to modify if the bottles turn out to be wide enough. I know from experience that using undersized bottles without adapters can cause them to deform more quickly than normal. My centrifuge was designed for 4x750ml but for the life of me I cannot find a 750ml bottle in any size that is safe for centrifugation even at lower speeds

I found a scan of the manual and apparently (according to IEC) the rotor doesn't need to be degraded based on hours or spin velocity, only based on the specific gravity of the sample being spun. I don't know if I trust that to hold true after ~30 years but I may see if I can bother one of my radiology friends to X-ray my rotor. There's no visible cracks or corrosion but who knows what's in there. Louis-Frederic or anyone really, do you have any experience getting an older rotor evaluated for safety?

I'll post pics when my bottles come and I spin something for the first time!

lfmichaud

@jon_laur‌ If I may ask how much were the Nalgene bottles? The Ziploc container take the form of the buckets after a few spinning. It doesn't make them leak or prevent them from getting out of the buckets. My centrifuge also spin around 3000g. I'm not too concerned about hte safety of this "slow" centrifuge. What you're paying for when you're buying a centrifuge is a steel cage to hold all the pieces together if it fail. And the failures are not as catastrophic as the super or ultra centrifuge.

Don't dismiss your centrifuge. You can still do most of the things with 3000g. It will just be a bit longer. And if you notice in MC they spin almost aeverything an hour at 27500g. I'm sure it wok but you can usually get very good results with much less. It's a little bit like all problems look like a nail when you have a nice hammer...

Feel free to experiment

grandpa.yum

4 pack of 500ml bottles was around 90 dollars with free shipping. Cheaper for standard buckets but as I mentioned the IEC buckets are wider and shorter.

I've read quite a bit about separation and it appears that lower RPMs may be able to achieve most of the same in much longer spans of time; although some very fine particles may only be separable under very high G force. I've ordered some Pectinex SP-L and am going to try some things later this week.

I ran the machine empty the other night and found out that there seems to be an issue with the temperature control for the refrigeration. It gets cold but the condenser never cycles off and I've verified the thermostat is functional. I'm going to look at the temperature controller circuit and clean out the condenser this week to see if I can get it working correctly again.

Edit: it turns out it was a shorted relay on the temperature control circuit. I highly recommend learning a bit about electronics repair as this centrifuge cost me 25 bucks + 20 bucks for a new SSR relay due to the previous owner being unable to fix it. Machines from the 80s/early 90s seem to be heavily documented and fairly simple circuits in all honesty

lfmichaud

Even including the price of the bottles that centrifuge was a steal! keep us informed with what you do with it.

grandpa.yum

Finally got it all fixed up! Relay is replaced and the refrigeration works great. While I had it apart I serviced the whole machine, found some resistors that were broken on the motor control board and some caps that had burst. Replaced all of that and threw in some new motor bushings (finding compatible bushings was a nightmare) and this thing should run for another 30 years. Took it up to 2800 RPM (~1750G according to http://www.sciencegateway.org/tools/rotor.htm) and seems to be working perfectly. There is a rotor available for my machine that can hold the same amount of product but can reach 4550G so I may look out for that on the various auction sites.

I spun some peas today, as they seem to be the quintessential centrifuge app post modernist cuisine. I pureed frozen peas and water and added Pectinex SP-L at 0.02% of the total weight of the puree and blended in my Vitamix until the mixture had heated up a bit. Centrifuged at 1750G for 7 hours. The Nalgene bottles held up well although they did deform a bit at the bottom; this is likely because I am not using the inserts for the buckets (good luck finding a reasonably priced set of inserts!). The deformation is fairly minor but unless i get inserts the bottles lifespan will likely be somewhat shortened.

Pictures! Shot on an iPhone so they aren't very good.

Pea water: this is a gorgeous color and the flavor is really interesting. I see a lot of potential applications for soups and sauces.

The pea solids and butter (solids on the right, butter on the left. harder to extract than you would think!):

spread on some toasted brioche (all I had around but the buttery taste worked okay). Again, amazing color and intense flavor

very happy to get this working. Got some strawberries, tomatoes, and watermelon to try next.

SteveM_20803

In addition to your list above, raspberries are very cool for butter and juice. Concord grapes worked well too; great jelly. My experiment with frozen peaches was a fail though, really awful.

lfmichaud

@jon_laur‌ - For your Pectinex was it really .02% or is it .2% as usual? I got good result with the strawberry juice and the tomato juice. ( But it will still have a little bit of color) @SteveM - I got good result for grape juices with seedlell grapes. How did you do with concord grapes? Did you use a press? And how did you do the raspberry butter?

grandpa.yum

i did .02%, that was what modernist cuisine had said (although it was referring to Pectinex Smash, which apparently is no longer available). Have you seen better results with 2%? Pectinex is fairly cheap, I don't mind adding more if it results in a better yield.

I did tomatoes last night, pretty solid result, yellow tinted water that while much clearer than the pea water it's still very much tinted. I'm spinning watermelon now with more Gs (upped to around 2000G, my rotor maxes out at 2505G). There's another rotor for my centrifuge that maxes out at 4600G, I might try to get that down the line to see if that can up the clarity a bit. Tough finding a decent price on 15-30 year old rotors though!

SteveM_20803

@Louis-Frederic, for the grapes, I tried two methods. I have a food strainer that will remove the seeds and skins. I also ran whole grapes through the blender. After running them through the centrifuge, I basically got the same results - a nice clear juice and the solids stuck to the side of the bottle.

With regards to the "butter" what I found is the solids are layered. It seems as though the seeds are heavier so they stick closest to the side of the bottle, then the lighter solids pile on top of that. It ends up being like glue, but you can work a spoon in between the solids layer and seeds layer pretty easily. The top layer is a nice buttery solid with tons of flavor. We spread it directly on toast. @jon_laur's middle picture is much like what I get from the berries I do.

grandpa.yum

I am very impressed with the watermelon:

900g puree with 2g Pectinex SP-L, spun at 2000G for ~9 hours (probably excessive but I fell asleep. Whoops!)

As you can see the bottles heavily deformed and are now retired. However the resulting liquid is amazingly clarified and flavorful:

It is absolutely delicious. The solids tasted off; the texture was very intriguing and they had a creamy mouthfeel but the flavor was not appealing.

I found a source on ebay for cheap bottles that do not need a spacer in my centrifuge (93.3mm wide, pain to find). They are 750ml so I will be able to spin 3L of product which is nice. This will hopefully limit the bottle degradation seen above.

lfmichaud

.02% is .2g/l What's is usually recommended is 2g/l ten time more. A good reference on using Pectinex is Cooking Issues http://www.cookingissues.com/2010/03/23/enzymatic-peeling-hell-yes/ Finding cheap rotor for centrifuge is usually more expensive than finding the centrifuge itself. Peoples that sell a rotor usually know what it's worth. People that sell a complete machine sometime don't...

HammeredChef_DEFINITELY_does_NOT_work_at_22134

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lot-2-Thermo-750-mL-Centrifuge-Bottles-Polypropylene-IEC-Centra-7-8-GP8-Sorvall-/181420060541?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2a3d7a6f7d

@jon Found these on eBay. Says they will fit your machine not cheap

grandpa.yum

awesome! that's actually a pretty good price, believe it or not. Tough to find bottles that will stick up to 3000+ G

lfmichaud

That's the problem with cheap centrifuges. We don't want to spend more money on the bottles than the Centrifuge! ;-)

Alyssa_Patterson_991537

Such bottle are very useful but somewhere costly but here found insightful budget friendly deals to buy it. Thanks for starting this thread.

Alyssa,

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