Designing glass - concept to glassware

A lot of our work begins with an email request or an inquiry over the phone. If the work falls within our purview, we'll probably ask a few questions, as well as ask for a rough sketch or photograph. We see quite a range of sketches and working drawings, including napkins and hand-waving over the phone. Technically proficient drawings with tight tolerances are routine as well. We welcome it all. Also, our extensive photo gallery has been very useful in helping our initial, mutual understanding of any given project. A photo is particularly helpful for repair work, as each repair is a unique event which a photo can help illustrate for quote purposes.

 In designing glass apparatus, you can save considerable time and money by taking note of the standard sizes of tubing available. All too often, to our taste, anyway, the glass is specified after everything else, resulting in requirements for glass of a size which is not standard, or has a very tight tolerance, which means higher expense. Typically standard tubing sizes have diameter tolerances on the order of several percent.

Experience has shown a sketch to be important; in order to be clear on the concept, and to get it right the first time. Scroll down to see some typical examples of requests for quotes, and the resulting glassware. We need to know what's important functionally, such as target volumes, fittings, interfaces, etc. and we're not afraid to ask questions. We like to be included early in the design process as we have important contributions to make from many years of experience. You can read about some of that experience on the customer comments page.

Below is a sketch we received as a Word document...! The two bits of info we got with this were its height restriction of 300mm and a call for #40 oring joints. On the right, the end product, a soxhlet extractor for processing molecular sieve material.

Soxhlet sketch

Soxhlet for molecular sieve photo

"Once again, Adams and Chittenden came through. I needed a custom soxhlet extractor for a project we were working on. We talked about what I was looking for and how I wanted it to work and they quickly translated those ideas and concerns into a functional piece of equipment. It works well and looks great." 

Harrison Stockton
Production Chemist
Nanosyn

glass fritted filters

glass filter

    

Below is an initial request and sketch for a jacketed reactor.

After discussions and clarifications, we present our understanding of the glassware in written form, below, along with a quote and estimated time of delivery.

Pictured above is the resulting 5Liter Jacketed reactor.

We also made several 10L versions of this same reactor.

943415

 

There are a number of surface treatments for glass such as;
Decaling
Etching and sandblasting
Adhesives; see links page for suppliers and their information.
Organometallic coating; see a sample of gold coating.
Amberizing for light sensitive compounds. Some sizes of borosilicate amber tubing are now available as well.
Tempering

We can coat glassware with a thermoplastic covering to protect the surface, and to contain the contents and shards in case of disaster. We do this commonly on apparatus for vacuum, such as condensers and receivers for rotary evaporators.

Email Us: info@adamschittenden.com