You probably have ever thought, “I want I may have a mass spectrometer at residence,” then we aren’t very shocked you’re studying Hackaday. [Thomas Scherrer] in some way acquired a damaged Brucker Microflex LT Mass Spectrometer, and whereas it was clearly not working, it promised to be a enjoyable teardown, as you may see within the first a part of the video under.
Inside are lasers and positively some excessive voltages floating round. This seems to be an industrial unit, nevertheless it has a fantastic design for service. Lots of the panels are detachable with out instruments.
The development is fascinating in that it seems to be like a rack, however as an alternative of rack mounting, all the pieces is mounted on cabinets. The tall unit isn’t only for impact. The machine has a tall column the place it measures the pattern beneath check. The measurement is a time of flight so the column must be pretty lengthy to get outcomes.
The massive fiber laser inside produces a 100 kW pulse, which sounds superb, nevertheless it solely lasts for two.5 ns. There’s additionally a “smaller” 10W laser within the unit.
There are additionally vacuum pumps and different wizardry inside. Try the video and get a glimpse into one thing you aren’t more likely to have an opportunity to tear into your self. There are numerous methods to do mass spectrometry, and a few of them are issues you possibly can construct your self. We’ve seen it achieved greater than as soon as.
