ROCK PREPARATION

The Earth & Planetary Sciences’ Rock Preparation Facility is fully equipped to aid researchers in petrographic section making, rock crushing, sample sieving, and mineral separation, with a full-time technical staff member to oversee the functioning of this facility. A partial list of equipment available includes:

Thin Section Lab:
• 24" and 18" slab saws
• 10" and 8" rolling-table, trim saws
• Ingram-Ward’s Universal thin-section cut-off saw
• Ingram-Ward’s Universal thin-section grinder
• Buehler Isomet 1000 cut-off saw
• 6" kerosene-cooled trim saw for delicate material
• Large customized rock-coring drill press
• Buehler vacuum-impregnation apparatus
• Three 18" steel grinding laps and one 6" steel lap
• Gem faceter for oriented grinding/polishing
• Automated colloidal silica section polisher
• Several 8" hand-polishing laps with a wide variety of media

Rock Crushing/Sieving Lab:
• Marcy steel jaw crusher
• Bico Chipmunk steel jaw crusher
• Spex Bench-top alumina jaw crusher
• Spex Shatterbox swing-mill
• Bico Pulverizer disk-mill
• Spex 8000 Mixer/Mill
• Automated agate mortar and pestle
• RX-29 RoTap sieve-shaker
• Complete set of 8" brass sieves
• Bench-top sandblaster

Mineral Separation Lab:
• Heavy liquids separation labware and chemicals
• Frantz LB-1 magnetic separator
• Carpco rolling-drum magnetic separator
• Wilfley shaker table
• Mica table