Centrifuge safety PSA

[Reginald Smith]

OK, I know a lot of you trained and skilled in lab work might be thinking "what an idiot" but I thought I'd share a safety PSA on centrifuges since not everyone in this space has formal training in lab equipment.

I have a cheap $100 centrifuge at 10k rpm to do ethanol extraction on and it worked great. Yes, I read the manual and I also used a balance tube and haven't had a problem using basically the exact same protocol for a while. Like most accidents this happened since I got too comfortable in my routine.

Today I decided to switch up the ethanol content in the first spin to possibly improve precipitation. So this obviously changed the density and weight of the sample but I used the same standardized balance tube I have been using. I think the sample vial may have been too full as well. When the oscillation sounds started from the centrifuge I knew something was up and while I was making sure I wasn't  just hearing things the plastic rotor spun off into the centrifuge cover. Luckily it was plastic and only had two tubes and the cover (mostly) held taking away the momentum so only the rotor and shredded vials fell out. But anyway I was lucky I only lost a cheap centrifuge and wasn't injured.

So boys and girls remember to weigh your samples and balance tubes to make sure the opposite vials are always about 0.1g or less different in weight. I would hate to hear about some 16 year old killing themselves with the same mistake.

Some good links:

http://media.clemson.edu/research/safety/centrifuges.pdf

https://ehs.umass.edu/sites/default/files/Fact%20Sheet%20Centrifuge%20Safety.pdf

[Andreas "Mega" Stuermer]

Thanks for sharing! Definitely important for newbies