🚀 go-pugleaf

I wish to thank all that have helped me with cleaning procedures.  Bruce Dunn, 
Jed Rothwell, Dieter Britz, Carl Ijames (or I. James?), Jim Miles, Roger 
Stout, Albert Boulanger, Jim Poulin, Lee John Droege, David Touland, Jim Ott, 
and Tod Green have all contributed.  Apologies to anyone that I have left out.  
Some of the suggestions made great sense, but are beyond my facilities.  I 
have tried to select the best features of the things that I can do. 

A little knowledge is sure discouraging.  Possibly I should go back to trying 
to build a 17 nanosecond conversion time, 0.1%, 10,000 to 1 dynamic range ADC.
That is what the SSC needs if it is to take useful data.  (I have been working 
on a true log converter scheme - but not much hope to get it to 17 ns.)

The coffeepot degreaser works great.  For those who have never seen such a 
thing, it consists of a 24 cup standard stainless steel american party coffee 
pot with several turns of 1/4" copper tubing wound around the outside at the 
top.  Put about 1" of 1,1,1,trichlorethylene in it and turn it on.  The tri-
chlor boils and the pot fills with a mist up to the line of the cooling coil.  
(To anyone copying this scheme, the coffee pot has too much power, I have to 
use a Variac to cut down the voltage.)  A part, say a screw driver blade, 
inserted into the mist drips with condensed vapor.  Thus this device hot 
cleans with freshly distilled solvent.  Not much vapor seems to get out into 
the room.  

Several have told me that Lithium is explosive in chlorinated solvents.  So 
now that I have built the nice degreaser, I cannot use it.  I am back to 
cleaning the Lithium with Xylene and drying it off with argon gas.  No, fans, 
I will not put Xylene in the coffee pot.  Possibly out doors in the spring not 
too near any favorite shrub.  

No plastic, no paper towels, no nitrogen, no chromic acid, go glass, no 
alcohols, no keytones, no tri-chlor, no air, etc., I am told.  It is like what 
you can talk about in the officers ward room (dining hall) in the Navy.  The 
list is so long (no women, politics, etc.) that all that is left is the 
weather.  

Now that I have it, is it safe to use the coffee pot with trichlorethylene as 
a pre-cleaner?  It sure does a great job of removing grease.  I would use it 
first, followed by baking, acid clean (aqua regia?), distilled water, baking, 
xylene, acetone, distilled water, baking, multiple rinses each step.  

I would plan to fill the cell in the argon filled plastic bag.  Just try to 
flow enough gas through the bag so that the plasticizer content is low in the 
atmosphere.  Make the LiOD in the bag.  Fill and seal the cell.  At this point 
(after waiting for the D2 and O2 to clear) I have an argon atmosphere in the 
cell.  Hmmm.  I wonder what the merits are of putting out some catalyst in the 
bag to recombine the D2 and O2 as they are made.  Would this be safer than 
flowing lots of Argon to get rid of this explosive mixture as it is made?  
Brother Lee made the LiOD before by just using a narrow necked flask in the 
open and depending on the exiting gas to retard water vapor contamination from 
the air (besides it is pretty dry where he lives at 9500 feet).

For the fans of my futures market operations, I just sold the last (March) 
contract.  Bought at $92 sold at $109.50.  The Nagoya speculation period will 
just about pay for the chiller (after net of tax effects and lost interest).  
I think the run up had nothing to do with "cold fusion". 

Tom Droege