I'm in biotech so I have a lot of experience with centrifuges of various types, though almost all small. If you unbalance a centrifuge that weighs, say, 50 kg, by a few grams and you run it at 2,000 g, you get some serious wobble. You let it run for more than a few seconds and the machines all set themselves down, because you'll fuck the bearing quickly. You get to 100,000 g and then you're talking about balancing to the hundredth of a gram. Obviously it's all relative, and here I'm sure they've designed to the known forces and expected changes in angular momentum, but I just don't see how you don't break the rotor arm here. Maybe a sliding counterweight on the opposite arm that can be brought to the center immediately upon release? You could change the moment of inertia pretty quickly that way.
My mother used to point out the patched hole in the ceiling at one of her labs where a grad student loaded up an ultracentrifuge without a counterweight. I guess it was easier to do in the '60s. LOL they have done no such fucking thing. What cross-section shall we pick for the arm? How 'bout 2m? 10,000g x 11,200 kg x 9.81 = 1.09e12 n /2 = 500GPa. Know of anything with a tensile strength of 500GPa? 4130 chrome moly is at 0.435 GPa so normie shit is straight out. Kevlar 49 yarn is at 0.235 GPa (with 3% elongation - that's 14cm on this rig). Carbon nanotubes? 270-950 GPa! Hey we have a solution! Except they don't exist for lengths longer than a stack of dimes and we haven't exactly broached the subject of our release mechanism yet. If a cursory examination of the Newtonian mechanics at hand invokes unobtanium, we can safely argue that absolutely no analysis such as this has been shown to investors or shareholders. Somebody on the company either has a rich daddy or serious kompramat over Airbus Ventures, Kleiner Perkins or both. "Effective weight equal to an ocean liner" plus "brought to the center immediately" is a delightfully humorous concept. Conservation of angular momentum dictates that to take the counterweight force to zero by pulling it towards the center, velocity must go to infinity which, I mean, given everything else going on, why not? So now your gear motor must do more than sling a pair of ocean liners around at 450 RPM, it must also be capable of accelerating to light speed instantaneously. Or I dunno I guess you could do that and then hit your magnetic brakes in a futile attempt to absorb that energy. So what took you an hour to pump in, you now need to pump half of it back out as close to instantaneously as possible. Which I'm not going to do the math on but I'll bet it's in the neighborhood of having your facility struck by lightning.You get to 100,000 g and then you're talking about balancing to the hundredth of a gram. Obviously it's all relative, and here I'm sure they've designed to the known forces and expected changes in angular momentum, but I just don't see how you don't break the rotor arm here.
Maybe a sliding counterweight on the opposite arm that can be brought to the center immediately upon release?
Uh, yeah. These days every UC is programmed to go to low speed to sense the balancing before it ramps up. From what I understand there were many lab incidents that led to those engineering changes. Even if no one gets hurt, you're still out $80k when you have to buy a new machine, because user error voids the warranty.My mother used to point out the patched hole in the ceiling at one of her labs where a grad student loaded up an ultracentrifuge without a counterweight. I guess it was easier to do in the '60s.
Yeah every piece of lab equipment I've ever seen has been safe as houses... with the exception of the janky shit bought out of China that will totally kill you given half a chance. My wife's college had some industrial herb grinders that would absolutely dispose of a body by accident.
You know, sometimes one comes face to face with one's shortcomings, and this might be that moment for me. When faced with a factset that doesn't add up, my reaction is almost always, "Well if I can see that this is bullshit in 2 minutes of calculations, then clearly I'm missing something." Techbros notwithstanding, my reaction is rarely. "Oh, easy, they're lying for money." I can be very credulous even at times when everything says to be the opposite.LOL they have done no such fucking thing.
If I hadn't had my very own "lolnope" moment with Theranos I might feel the same. But I mean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651 That right there? is a dowsing rod bought by Seal Team 6.