Hot plate/stirrers...BEWARE!

[labohio]

Just a FYI for anyone looking to buy a hotplate/magnetic stirrer.  I recently purchased a unit, CE-HOTSTIR from Home Science Tools.  It's the one with the blue front panel, and they are available from other sources.  It's solid, and appeared to work fine.  However, ~2.5 hours of medium stir and moderate boil, I noticed a smell, and slight smoke from around the plate.  I shut it down to cool, and the flask suddenly cracked, even though I had it on a wire gauze.  I had been using a Soxhlet, and the solvent and extract ran all over it.  I called, and although they have had problems with them, since it had been "abused", it could not be replaced.  THEN I took time to read some of the 29 reviews, most of which had problems with this unit.  HST is a very reputable company that I have done business with in the past, and will in the future.  This is obviously not a reliable unit, the heating element being the consistency of flat metal dental floss wrapped around foil cardboard!  I recommended they consider discontinuing this unit for obvious reasons, and I just want everyone to beware before purchasing this or a similar unit.  I'm now looking at used commercial Cornings on ebay for what I paid for this.

[The Old Chemists]

, magnetic stirrers are one of those things that you get what you pay for. They are expensive apparatus'.