The whole video my brain was screaming into its subjective void "fucking get the caulk gun and seal it goddamn it, it's easy and works c'mon tom!!" Of course I can't do any chemistry at all so just keep my bitching on the downlow ;)
He really just needs to walk down the street on trash day and pick up a cabinet and a vacuum cleaner for that. A cabinet turned on the side with the bottom door removed makes a perfect fume hood. If you leave the bottom door on and add a latch you can even close it up to keep drafts out. An old vacuum cleaner with a funnel on the hose and stiff wire taped to the hose, lets you bend and move it over your reaction instead of having to suck huge volumes of air.
Imagine the confusion, relief, the horror of the paramedics and first responders on scene after his home chemistry shop blows up. Hey, at least it's not another meth lab this time!
Top mechanic tip: Use water with dish soap in it to check for leaks around seals of your box, also works for checking for holes/broken seals in car tires. Also, just to reiterate what tonnes of people have been mentioning, a silicone gasket maker from your local automotive shop should also be a decently cheap way to seal cracks that are letting air in/out.
Oh sorry good Sir, I forgot its Australia, of cause this would be a high Ozone Environment with all those UV-Rays over there. how could I think of something this mundane like oxygen...
Thoughts from a fellow chemistry student with extremely limited experience in air-sensitive chemistry: 1) Use a sealant that is much more flexible than the crappy hot glue. Probably silicone of some sort would be good? 2) Make lots of holes in the tubing that lets the inert gas in so you don't just have one single big stream of gas coming in (I think "redxpen" explained that stuff better than me). 3) Get yourself some delicious nitrogen gas (should be much much cheaper than argon). This way you can do the initial purging with argon (which is much better at getting rid of the oxygen since you can kinda fill it from the bottom). Afterwards, you can use nitrogen gas to keep a slight positive pressure inside the chamber. This way you'll be pretty much guaranteed that no oxygen seeps in after establishing the inert atmosphere, but you'll also save a lot of money (I reckon). Heck, even CO2 could work in some circumstances, although you'll obviously have to make sure that it won't react with anything before you try. 4) Do get yourself a flow-meter, as you suggested. 5) Building an antechamber/airlock could be a good idea, although maybe a bit difficult and time consuming. You could also just make another slightly smaller (closable) opening in the box. This way, if you forgot to put something in there (like a spatula or whatever), you can just crank up the nitrogen/argon stream while opening the lid and slowly putting the thing (e.g. spatula) inside without introducing much oxygen. I've done a little bit of air-sensitive chemistry (just in glassware, not in a glovebox), and keeping the reaction vessel at a positive pressure with nitrogen gas works perfectly fine if I for example need to add an addition funnel to a setup that should be air-free. 6) Don't waste any time trying to make a vacuum with that setup, it's not going to do you any good.
100% Silicone caulk is dirt cheap and should work for sealing. Look for the 'pond' or 'aquarium' safe stuff and it'll be just silicone suspended in acetic acid that evaporates off. Flexible and pretty much inert, so you can use it to seal things up to your heart's content
I can't tell how big the hole is over on the side, but he might be able to 3D something to fit onto that. My thoughts would be a silicone sealed door on inside with a similar mechanism as that on top for ease while using the gloves, and then an adapter to threaded schedule 80 PVC or metal piping. Cap the end with thread tape and a screw-on cap, and you have a pretty simple airlock. If I got the measurements for the hole, I could probably make a model and send it on Discord.
Your hand should have it's own channel, it has a great personality and it's very expressive, it's a damn fine hand. Sorry I'm not saying you don't have a nice personality, you do, you're great...it's just hard to compete with should a classy hand.
An interesting start to a glove-box. I have spent most of the last 40 years working in glove-boxes (fairly fancy commercial units, weighing a ton or two, with atmospheric circulators, oxygen scrubbing beds, etc.). One thing you definitely need is an outlet near the top. This will help with purging and pressure regulation. The simplest way is to run a hose (1/2" to 1" ID) into a tall bottle of oil to make a "bubbler". This gives a visual of flow rate, serves as pressure relief (so the box doesn't turn into shrapnel when the argon regulator fails) and prevents back-flow of air. A good connecting spot would be the port on the upper left of the back of the box (with the internal baffle). For hoses, I would recommend high density polyethylene (HDPE). It is not very flexible, but it has low permeability to oxygen and is very inexpensive (use a heat gun for tighter bends, or to straighten out coiled tubing). Place the bubbler well below the box, so that pulling your hands out of the gloves does not draw oil back into the box (huge mess). If you have questions, you can find my e-mail here: members.tm.net/lapointe/index.htm if you dig a little.
@@robertlapointe4093 Yeah, was thinking the same thing. Overpressure bubbler would be ideal, I think. Would serve as a flowrate-monitor and a pressure-release simultanously.
@@Calyrekt Research chemist, mostly making and testing organometallic catalysts (both for small molecule synthesis and polymer synthesis). Also a fair bit of continuous reactor engineering. Off the shelf reactors need some tweaking when your feeds are pyrophoric (flammable and/or explosive on contact with air). Lot of fun, except for a few bad bosses (reason I retired a few years ago, but those BBs were fired and now I'm consulting with that company again, even get in some more glove-box time).
Just my two cents from a guy that has to do all his experiments in a sub 0.1 ppm O2 glovebox: -you can use cheap nitrogen if you don't mind having a glovebox that doesn't go down to the ppm levels of oxygen. The only advantage of argon is that it's heavier, if you pump it in at the bottom your oxygen will float on top and get picked up by the outlet on the top. We have nitrogen boxes for stuff that doesn't require extremely low levels of oxygen, so it can be done -working with Sodium in a glovebox is a PITA (it's great for an atmosphere check though) as pure sodium sticks to everything like superglue. Might keep that in mind before you get a sticky, really reactive metal on everything... Also, pure Alkalis from a glovebox react a lot more violent with air than the ones covered in oil: sodium is fine, but lab equipment that has traces of potassium or the heavier alks shouldn't be cleaned with water. I just put it in a fume hood and leave it there for a day -put your light outside the box with a diffuser stuck to the window, you are going to need the extra space inside -if you want a "real" inert atmosphere you've gotta use a slight overpressure inside the box (we use between 2 and 5mbar positive pressure, if it's lower than 2 you get problems putting your gloves on) -a bicycle tire repair set is really handy for repairing gloves that have a leak -more fasteners and silicon glue, we have tried building a DIY glovebox before with every edge sealed (the "airlock" consisted of a pane of acrylic glass that was screwed onto the side panel of the box, the nuts inside were covered with silicon and there was a rubber seal between the hatch and the box), still leaked quite a bit -as others have already suggested: Use a elephant trunk (siphon, open end inside a container with oil, lower end to box) as the overpressure valve with a ball directly under the end of the pipe in the oil that will seal that pipe when you get a negtive pressure inside the pipe/box. This WILL happen if you have a slight overpressure and try to get your hands out of the box -commercial boxes use a copper catalyst that gets oxidized by the oxygen/water in the water and regenerated with a Argon/hydrogen mixture. Might be worth a try... -Antechamber? May work with surprisingly little effort, even a normal seal sandwiched between the metal cylinder and the door will hold a vacuum (the lower the inside pressure of the chamber the higher the force pressing it shut->good antechambers will hold a vacuum for months without problems). Also, use at least 5mm steel plates (bc of the pressure) -don't underestimate the amount of gas a glovebox needs, we nearly go through a 50l flask of argon per week/box... A proper flush of the system is going to require at least three complete purges down to a few mbar -a good way to reduce the amount of water inside is to put everything inside a 75°C drying oven for the night before putting it into the box, that reduces the amount of surface moisture
You may want to make sure that it's relatively easy to unplug that hole on the bottom. I can totally foresee some point where you're going to want to remove a delightful cocktail of solution and glass shards from it, and you'll want the process of draining the box as painless as possible. Also, camera tripod mount screws are 1/4" machine screws, so it's pretty easy to construct special-purpose mounts. A mount stuck on a block of wood is a really great way to keep a camera steady for low-angle work like this.
@@ExtractionsAndIre Plus, I don't know if you are looking to work with explosives in the glovebox. If you are, I reckon you'd want the container to relieve pressure easily in case of an incident. I found this paper with a cursory google search: core.ac.uk/download/pdf/208354823.pdf It could be really good if someone more knowledgable about gloveboxes and/or explosive handling weighed in on this.
They make plugs for testing plumbing and such that look like fancy wine bottle corks - they have a lever (or wing nut) on the top and if you flip the lever over, it squeezes the rubber so that it expands out the sides and makes a tight seal. Not sure how well it will do on sheet metal, but it's a damn sight better than duct tape.
I think you could use silicone instead of hot glue, it should seal pretty well, also, shouldn't you vacuum-purge the chamber before so you don't waste that much argon while purging?
Great idea and thanks for giving me an excuse to get a sand blaster! A pretty basic suggestion - consider the corrosion you'll get from HCl at some point. I'd try to keep all of the screw threads on the outside, and coat any exposed metal on the inside (silicone caulk?) Obviously tempered glass would be better than acrylic for clarity and durability, but spendy. I'd keep coming up with ideas to make it better (instead of using it), but you get more done because it doesn't have to be perfect - just good enough.
I always see do-it-yourself Builds on RU-vid that are done so impeccably and makes me not only jealous but pretty ashamed of my failure to reach that level of ability, this late int my life 😕 but then I watch a video like this... boy does seeing all that tape provide validation
1) Transfer hatch/Air lock, whatever you want to call it. 2) adjustable mount, be it magnetic or a flexible stand, for a camera, as well as a hole you can wire up and then seal with foam and silicone or whatever around the cables, so you don't have to run out of battery. Wrapping the cables in Teflon tape to protect the cables might be a good idea, so you don't have them degrade over time, then cause a spark that lights anything on fire or just gives you a nasty shock when making contact with the metal frame.
I recommend this type of very low pressure regulator - Equilibar LPR2 no bleed. Mount this on your box, downstream of the tank regulator. This is all the pressure you need, far lower than your tank regulator can provide stably. I've used these for years to keep high altitude plastic balloon film test boxes pressurized to ~1000Pa, which probably is about what you want anyway. I recommend 1/4" OD tubing, polyethylene, both for your tank regulator to box regulator, and for the box reg to the box. Use "push to connect" fittings- they will save your sanity.
Get a better seal on the lid so you can have some real fun. Also, clean up the lid to make it easier to view through. Also absolutely drop the hot glue for silicone. The hole behind the cover should be easy to fix if you grind off whatever they're using to rivet it or any pressure is gonna pop that tape. Also the hole in the bottom.
A couple of modification that i would make: 1. Change the acrylic for Glass, If you have the money to spare, Borosilicate glass, but a cheap, sacrificial, glass pane that you totally "borrowed" from a skip would work too. also, remove the hinges from the lid and just use additional latches to hold the lid down, less strain on the lid that way. 2. Use Silicone sealant wherever there is a join/gap/bolt. this will make it air tight and it wont be as reactive with solvent vapors as the Foam or the Gaffer Tape will be. (seriously, do not use strong solvents in there until you have replaced the tape with something or the glue will just melt and give way) also cover any exposed metal on the inside with Silicone or they will react with any vapors produced. 3. Add an expansion chamber to the device, they are usually used in water systems to prevent water hammer effects, but they will work just fine for Air too. this will stop the box "breathing" each time you put your gloves in and out. you can make a pretty cheap one just using a couple of balloons but then you may have a problem with corrosion and solvents again. 4. In the same vein as the expansion chamber, add an exhaust port that can go into a water/solvent trap. this way if there is a buildup of pressure for some reason or you need to do something that has a lot of vapours, it has a place to go (eg. Heating a reaction, you dont want to heat an enclosed system) 5. Add an "Aux Air" port. this can be used for vacuum or any gases that you need to introduce to a reaction (chlorine generator for example) this way you wont need to have a huge setup inside the box. 6. Switch the gloves out for better fitting, thinner ones. you only need chemical resistance in there and it will give you better dexterity when you are using it. 7. Add a light inside the box. every time you put your head over the top you change teh natural light and it will get frustrating. 8. Finally, and you have already mentioned this in the vid, make an airlock. just a smaller chamber that will use up less argon to cycle than removing the lid from the whole box. just make sure its large enough for anything you might want to add (thermo-probes, additional beakers/flasks etc)
If you wanted to build an airlock, you might be able to do that with two pieces of tupperware (possibly best the four sided ones that seal each side with a clasp) you glue to the wall, one on the inside and one on the outside, their bottoms removed. And of course a paint job!
A recommendation from my undergrad days for a cheap H2O/O2 sensor, cut a hole or otherwise break the vaccum on an old incandescent light bulb (the kind with a tungsten wire) and put a power strip in the box (power might be helpful for other reasons, like keeping your camera charged). How long the bulb lasts gives you a pretty good idea of how much O2 is around, in our glovebox we could usually keep it going for a few days, sometimes a week. My guess is you'll get a few hours of light out of it, but it might help you test seals and such.
Others have given good advice. I can add a little as a geochemist who works in a soft vinyl box (which is cheaper in a lab set-up than the hard shells, if you can handle a couple PPM of O2). I agree that N2 is really the better option for something home made like this. Our boxes use an N2/H2 gas mixture (~4% H2) and have palladium catalysts to eliminate O2 that gets in through the transfer chamber. That set-up involves a bit more gas regulation, catalysts, and not everything loves H2, so it is probably not great here, but to scrub residual O2, we use a bubbler with pyrogallol and KOH in it. Something like that may be useful? I recommend some molecular sieves for drying, they are rechargeable and not too costly. Also mason jars, You can store your air sensitive things in mason jars or other canning jars inside the chamber if you have to briefly vent and they will probably be okay.
Hey, the sandblasting box likely won't hold up to a perfect vacuum, but one place I worked used to evacuate as much air as possible before back filling with argon. I don't know how sensitive your future chemistry will be, but it worked great on the very reactive titanium that was welded and heat treated in similar vacuum chambers. Albeit, the heat treat furnaces did not have gloves that extended into the oven, just the welding tanks.
Hey man, hope I'm not late for the party. My experience from working with physicists (I'm a chemist working in a physics work group) is that you can improve the fittings by using copper plates instead of foam. It's standard when working at pressures of around 10^(-10) mbar, so they might do a good job. Copper has the additional benefit of not leaking out any solvents. From the physicists, I also learned that you can just use soap water to check for leaks. That works hilariously well. Regarding the inert gas, you might wanna consider if you don't want to buy a bottle of nitrogen as well. Most chemicals requiring protective atmosphere do just fine with pure and dry N2 and that might save you some money in the long run. You can pass the gas through CaCl2 if you want it nice and dry. Hope I could give you some valuable input, don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions. Cheers from Germany mate, love your videos!
For filming on a similar level to where your work area would be in the box. Considered maybe a section of clear perspex glued to one of the walls? Maybe run some tests/fit ups not involving your box first before cutting large holes into it. That way if your camera is outside the box, it is isolated from corrosion/fire/burning etc
@@ExtractionsAndIre There were some idiots round here that broke into a chemical storage place to steal laughing gas but took the nitrogen dioxide instead. They both died.
@@DaftFader til I probably would've died if I ever tried to steal laughing gas cause I thought "isn't nitrogen dioxide laughing gas" and ho boy no it's not
A simple way you could make an airlock out of that hole on the right side that you covered with tape and acrylic; get some PVC pipe about the same diameter as that hole, attach a threaded fitting and threaded end cap to both ends, seal the gap around the pipe with silicon. Open the outside cap to put stuff in, close it, open the inside cap and you have your airlock. If you want to take it a step further, if all your PVC is high pressure rated, you could attach a high pressure valve to the outside end cap and vacuum purge the airlock after putting things in it.
About Foams: There are so-called "open-cell" and "closed cell" foams. In open cell foam, the bubbles in the material are connected with each other through small holes, meaning gas can flow throughout the entire foam, making it mostly useless as a seal. Ideally dont use any foam at all. Silicone rubber and similar stuff is a much better option.
I raccomend to add an air-lock because with your set up you are just increasing the pressure of the glove box and NOT removing the air (or at best you are replacing it very slowly)! With an air lock, the ones used for fermentig, you'll always have atmospheric presure inside the box but there will be a way for the air to exit, I'll not racomend using water for the air lock as it can leak some humidity in so use something like petrol oil or something like that.... Another way to do it is to employ a vacoom pump to evacuate the chamber at first, flush it with argon and than repeat a couple of times to get the desire "interness" Hope the tips turned out to be usefull, you are doing a grat job!
I would suggest adding a one-way exhaust valve to the box, rather than relying on leakage through the gaps to purge the box. Then maybe replacing the gloves with some that allow for finer control and easier manipulation of small parts.
If anyone wants to make a cheap, disposable glovebox you can use a clear tote and silicone to seal everything. Duct tape can seal around the cutout for the door really well, kind of like how Tom sealed the holes in this video. I built one like this and it works great. I use it to deal with P2O5, lithium, sodium, potassium, cesium and NaK and it all looks just as good coming out as it did going in. I think I have maybe $30 in the build? The most expensive part was when I bought the gloves, which is up to personal preference, besides the tote itself. I also put a 1 way valve on it in case something happens and gas is produced. That allows it to vent without sucking air back in. It also let's you purge the air without having the door open, saving on argon, nitrogen or whatever you need to use. If I am doing something that may heat up or catch fire I just put a couple of metal cookie sheets in the bottom and do everything on top of those. Using a few of them provides layers of protection as opposed to just 1 layer that can heat up and burn through the plastic. It all works great, especially in a pinch and for how cheap and easy it was to build. I'll put it this way, it works well enough for me to clean up group 1 metals, NaK and P2O5 and lets me rebottle it all and keep it clean and pretty for reselling it.
Gopro, pass-through for a vacuum source or to feed another gas for reactions, adjustable led lighting inside, mains pass-through for a stirring hotplate, and some lab grade glives 😎😎😎
I think this is a good idea. You might want to leave that big port on the right covered loosely with tape, so that in the event of some sudden pressure increase the tape will blow off and vent the box. You could probably get away with much cheaper nitrogen for a lot of experiments. Gasses form solutions when mixed. When you mix salt and water, initially the salt falls to the bottom, but once dissolved, the salt is evenly distributed in solution. Gasses are the same - once mixed, heavier gasses don't settle out. The atmosphere isn't a multi-layered cocktail of pure gasses, for example.
You could utilise the large hole you put the acrylic over to add a fume extraction system so you can convert it into a janky fume hood with only a few bolts.
In the progress tree of the chemistry game, jumped right past a proper fume hood and went straight to a glove box. P.S. The hardware store probably carries rolls of weather stripping. It's self-adhesive foam tape made specifically for sealing doors and windows and crap.
Some suggestions: please add a pressure relief valve in the event of an overpressure incident. Consider also a solid replaceable interior floor--you know something will drop or drip through the grate to where you can't reach. You could try to use a flexible plastic sleeve zip tied as airlock on that hole on the side, it *might* work for occasional transfers. A container of desiccant and a constant low flow of N2 would be cheaper than Ar as others have said; that way you can save your expensive Ar for keeping narrower containers anoxic.
Engineer here: - flow meter! - vacuum line (so you can purge better with less argon) - better bottom, maybe a bit of sheet metal or something - fill in that dead space in the bottom - proper gasket material (you could use silicone, RTV, weather stripping, butyl tape, or cut a solid one out of a big rubber sheet), but check chemical compatability with what you want to run - less obnoxious gloves with some more disposable gloves covering them
I can honestly say I would've never guessed "Aussie goes elbow-deep on a box to make 'er wheeze" was something I'd end up watching on RU-vid, or that it would star this dudee.
A better option for sealing the box would be to use Canopy Tape. Canopy tape can be purchased from any place that installs truck canopies. You could likely buy different widths of tape or just cut it yourself. A bonus would be that you could unscrew the bottom, canopy tape over the screw holes, and reassemble the box. Canopy tape is a long lived dense foam tape meant for life surviving the elements and keeping water out of truck canopies. It comes with adhesive on one side. Keep it in mind!
Paint the inside a neutral colour like white, grey or black. it'll improve the quality filming inside, is easier on the eyes than red and won't distort the colour of the chemical you're working with.
You don't need the chamber to be pressurized, and some sort of diffusion mechanism like a tube stuffed with stainless wool with holes drilled every few cm would get the gas in the box more evenly. This is used for "purging" in welding to protect parts from oxidation. The flow rates for the argon are generally pretty low or even off once the enclosure is filled, and the enclosures also don't have to be perfectly sealed but the difference is that purged sections don't generally have movement of gloves and objects inside and welding procedures are usually just a few minutes long vs the hours long that a chemical reaction might take.. I'd suggest that you seal any gaps and openings with a silicone, which is also more likely to be resistant to the inevitable chemical spills and I'd recommend a stainless steel drain valve on the bottomvs plugging up that hole so that you can wash out and drain the enclosure after your inevitable chemical spills 😁.. I'd also suggest some cheap ceramic tiles from the home improvement store to completely cover up the metal grate and provide you a stable work surface so you don't drop things through the grate and have to take the whole thing apart to get something out of the bottom..
Fill a wash bottle with soapy water and spray it around any seals, if you see bubbles forming you’ve got a leak. As others have mentioned silicon RTV is a great sealant frequently used in automotive applications so you should be able to find it pretty easily at any auto shop, you can use the RTV to seal up cracks and to make a sealing surface on the lid as it dries into a soft stretchy rubber. Getting a flow meter is a great idea, just make sure it’s calibrated/designed for argon otherwise it won’t be accurate. You’ll want the argon to fill from the bottom slowly and evenly, a small tube with lots of holes and something very porous on top, scotch brite or a open cell foam.
If you didn't want to spend money on argon, you could probably get a decently inert atmosphere by (a) burning a candle or a piece of charcoal or something in the closed box until it ran out of oxygen and went out, and (b) having anhydrous calcium chloride or another drying agent in the box to suck up the water vapor from the air.
Read Glovebox and thought you were taking the show on the road, this is actually much safer, which is a surprise on this channel. (edit) you might want to try some proper gasket rubber on the lid, replacing the acrylic with a glass pane might also be a good idea in case of fire or splashes, the screws around the bottom, if those can be removed, putting some gasketing around that might also be a good idea, or a bead of silicon sealant, some extra latches on the lid wouldnt go a miss either, other than that the most important thing would a solid platform to work on and some better gloves.
And as much as it goes against other ideas on this channel, use safety glass (i.e. not the kind which turns into daggers (or micro-daggers) when it shatters due to an explosion)
Acrylic is actually safer than most types of glass. It melts instead of shattering and becoming a missile. Polycarbonate is also very strong but acrylic is plenty. I am more worried about having burs discs in case of sudden over pressure. A large rubber flap taped over a hole from the outside that gets blown off before the lid or box becomes a projectile.
BTW, if anyone really really want to do some small scale air free stuff and can't afford/can't make a decent glove box there's also "glove bag" containment chambers which are basically just sealable LDPE bags with gloves inside that you can inflate with an inert gas. The downside is the gloves suck major ass and they're wonky to work with because you have to load all your materials into a deflated bag. Also since it's plastic they can't really handle heat or non-polar solvent spills. I know this eliminates a lot of fun things but maybe it will be useful for some experiments? You can get one for around $20 USD on Amazon. Another tip is that you can buy small argon spray cans meant for keeping wine fresh after opening for ~$15 USD on Amazon. They only contain around 12 grams of argon which is I think around 7 liters of gas, making them pretty expensive for filling a glove box but is probably more than enough to de-air small reaction vessels/the headspace of reagent containers for a few experiments. Just make sure you get the ones that say they contain pure argon because some companies sell nitrogen instead which isn't as good.
Back at the organic lab in college we used a nitrogen cylinder, and filled everything without using fume hood or any kind of glove box. We made gringnard compounds, and they were bloody nice. I love those shits.
You can check for air leaks by pressurizing the cabinet with an air compressor or even a hair dryer, then use a spray bottle full of water with a few drops of dish washing detergent. Any air leaks will cause the soapy water to make bubbles. Cork would make a much better gasket for the glass unless you'll be experimenting with a substance that attacks organic material.
First things first you need a trio of ball valves mounted to bulkhead fittings, one for the argon, one to vent to atmosphere, and one for vacuum. Next you need a simple airlock. After that you need a second air lock style adaptation for the camera and to put it behind some glass because it'd be less reactive than acrylic. Need to also ditch the hot glue on the inside of the bottom joint and weld a proper bottom on there, just a thin piece that comes about a half inch to an inch up the sides so that you have a good seal.
The starting comment on how annoying the air is really resonates with me as an organic synthesis undergrad researcher living in Florida, where the humidity is almost always above 80%.
So, I'd consider running a gasket around the entire perimeter where the cutout for the glass makes its 90 degree meeting. I'd also consider putting some sort of an insert over the grill in the floor. It would save on gas volume and prevent things from potentially falling where you can't get them. Spilling your yield on tile would be better than spilling it through the grill. Put in stronger plexiglass, a pressure gauge and vacuum connection. That would pretty much be ideal, I think.
Idea I came up with is to get a vacuum pump and a setup where you can have your gas of choice, the pump, or closed. You also could use one of those holes for something to measure pressure.
I think you could lay a ballon in the box and fill it with Argon until you can see that the ballon is getting a bit smaller. Then you can turn of the gas flow, if the ballon is getting bigger after this it isnt 100% sealed and if it stays for some minutes , you know how good it stays in there. Good video 👍👍😀👍❤️ I love seeing your content
$3 Helium bottles at the balloon store. In a pinch, propane cylinder will do, assuming your fume hood handles flammables. Wet steel wool tower or Chromium +2 (zinc) column will take oxygen out of the air (alkaline steel wool snags CO2 also) CO2 works sometimes. Some metallations can be done with Zinc and Zinc organometallics are tolerant of air and water.
If you get soapy water you can easily check where there are leaks. You can also do that with another gas which isn't that expensive then. If you are able to make it almost fully sealed you could also attach a vacuum pump to it so you can fill / evacuate the chamber to get it really free of air
I suspect every single fastener will leak a fair bit - sand around the fastener (to give some mechanical adhesion surface), clean it with a solvent, and cover the fastener and circumference with sealant - epoxy or silicone. Add a flow meter to your gas source and to the chamber to get an idea of how much gas is leaking. Once you've got it really sealed up well, a very low pressure relief valve would be a good idea.
For about $4-5 you should get a tube of silicone sealant and squeeze a bead around all the gaps. No need for tape or the foam. You can get an air tight seal with silicone. There is a reason they use it for gluing window glass into the frames and in bathrooms. Silicone is also unreactive so no worries about fumes.
A potential improvement for the gasket at the top: get hold of some silicone caulking. The kind of stuff used to seal windows and fishtanks. From what I've read, if you put dish soap on the surface you don't want it to stick to, you can use the lid itself to form a decent gasket. So, for instance, you could put soap on the rim of the box itself and apply the silicone where the foam is now. There'll still be leaks, I'm sure (there are always leaks), but it might save you some argon.
Use silicone sealant around the edges to seal in the air. Use rubber seals instead of foam on the lid, don't use hot glue use the silicone sealant. For the larger holes you covered with acrylic, put a rubber seal and/or sealant in between it and the box.
As person who was working and servicing lab glovebox, I can say a few words: @Seal Piercing advices are great, I personally would recommend silicone in place of foam and any other seal. It is chemically resistant, easy to apply and form. I think King of Random had a nice video about making vacuum seal silicon play dough. Should be usable here. As for oxygen/moisture scavenging: molecular sieves x13 are used if my memory is correct. Nice, easy and reusable. For oxygen scavenging, copper foam made from a reduction of copper oxide powder tablets (5-10% H₂ in Ar). This eats up oxygen like crazy. But for all this to work, the loop with a pump must be installed to move gas through the system. For work with organic solvents, normally container with charcoal pellets is mounter before those two for catching them. Especially alcohols destroy active copper. A lot of informations about Glovebox use (old school ideal for hobbyists) can be found in Duward F. Shriver, M. A. Drezdzon - Manipulation of air sensitive compounds-Wiley-Interscience (1986). @Lee Nux proposed one way valve at the top of box. If you decide to build full circulation system (it will eat O₂ and H₂O and decrease the usage of argon) i would say that valve at the top is must: when you work with stuff that create vapours in box, they should be vented out of box to not oversaturate circulation system (which should be turned of for this time). Second thing, pressure inside should be regulated in any way: flow regulator on the inlet and probably one way valve with overpressure setting. even big glass bubbler with mercury/heavy oil would be sufficient. And definitely, you need small chamber to insert stuff inside while the system is on. Heck, this way you can use this as storage for very active chemicals when you are not making chemistry inside. At the end, this would be a pretty big project to go from box flushed with argon to anything more serious.
A good addition is put a pipe of about 3 inch/ 75mm in diameter pointing up to release the atmosphere and put a short length of collapsible fire hose on it so it flops over restricting the air moving in and in the event something goes wrong, a fuck ton of gas can escape out of the box instead of blowing the lid off
I would suggest converting one of the ports into an airlock. Higher pressure inside would keep oxygen out when you open and close the door. Also... more lockdown points and some silicone tape for a better seal on the top.
Put a dc barrel jack mount in the side. You could then wire it to supply dc power for lights or camera inside (it has a light, but maybe a pump or something. power plugs are good). Perhaps get some silicone caulk and redo the bottom layer for better seal. Perhaps bolting it down to a table/bench? Something ridged. They are heavyish but if the table shakes, no bueno. cool project dude
JB weld and gasket maker is what I would have used for this. I would also add an air lock. I would also add a pressure/ vacuum gauge to monitor the environment.
I used to maintain the freon degreaser where I worked years ago, and the gas was heavier than the air, and it kept the air out very well without a lid. I suspect argon would do the same, but the lid will help alot in keeping the air out, once it is out. But, until it is out, you need to let it bleed out as the argon enters the box, otherwise the box gets over pressurized. Use the candle on a wire trick to show the argon is in the box, then you can see the pressure does not need to be very high to maintain the level, and you will save gas.
My two cents: Get a bigger tile, preferably one that barely fits. You need a bigger work space in there! (And maybe fill up the lower part, under the grill, with something like clean gravel, to reduce the volume of the box. Can't tell if that would reduce argon use much.) Cool stuff, anxious in more than one way to see your experiments in the future!
You should attach a vacuum cleaner to the cabinet to remove air before adding argon. that is what I did with a cabinet I made for sand blasting, works like a charm.
Cut a window in the back or left side panel and put a piece of acrylic as a window to shoot through. Use the same peel offs as the top to refresh when it gets a mess.
As you have a vacuum pump you could make a connexion to evacuate it, also i work with Argon glove boxes because N2 could maybe interfer with my chemistry, however if you just need dry and water free atmosphere i suggest to go for N2, cylinders are much cheaper and as you use an overpressure you can achiever inert atmosphere by flushing the GB with N2(even better if you can cycle it vacuum-N2) it would still be much cheaper
Mix silicon cauking with corn starch flour, cover the surfaces with soap, create a seal with the super putty, for the lid, it's removable and will shape to exactly what it need to be to seal.
Plenty of great suggestions on improving the box already by others so I won't address that... But I have one for your camera. Please keep it still! I don't get motion sick but, man, your video pretty much did it for me. Otherwise, great video. Loved it.
The drain on the bottom you could weld a nut on to. That way you can seal it with a bolt. I'm not sure if it would work but maybe a pressure gauge at the top of the box could be used to monitor the flow rate. And allow you to guarantee that you had a positive atmosphere in the box.
looks like other people have already suggested using rtv silicone where you were using hot glue and tape. go to an automotive store and ask for gasket maker. i'd take the bottom off, run a bead around it, and put it back on, should make an excellent seal. might not hurt to do the plexiglass thing over the holes, but run a bead of rtv around that too. use an air compressor (or just that fish tank bubbler) to pressurize it for testing and then put soapy water on potential leaky spots, should bubble where leaks are
Need a vent for the displaced air. Right now the leaks are the only place we got for the old air to escape. A pressure gauge would help to so you don't over pressurize and blow out a tape hole. If it's 15 psi outside then maybe 15.5 Inside but that's up to you could go higher or keep it even
If you don't want to weld that box airtight just put sheetmetal over the holes and fasten with tecscrews or poprivets. Use RTV silicone in between to make it airtight. As for the lid, you should be able to find rubber window/doorseal on rolls in the hardware store to replace the open cell foam(if it's necessary.) For testing the chamber you could affix s pressure gauge to the box and pressurise it and see for how long it maintains pressure.
An armchair idea: maybe add a pressure regulator to the box, then 1. the air doesn't need to get purged out all the leaks, but has a nice exit point at the regulator, and 2. when the cabinet is filled and slightly pressurized, argon will leak out instead of air leaking in, so the leakiness only determines argon usage and not argon purity in the box
Make use of the hole in the bottom! Run gas in through there, put a fine mesh over the hole and add a load of fiberglass to diffuse the incoming gas. Also, make use of your big side hole with the nice matching metal ring to build yourself an airlock out of PVC pipe with a big sliding gate valve on each end. Gaffer tape should do the trick elsewhere. As others have said, more clamps on the lid. Off to a good start though!
Not sure how applicable this is to Australia, but in the US we use CGA (Compressed Gas Association, iirc) fittings for gases. Your argon bottle would have a CGA580 connection. The inlet on the cabinet is almost certainly NPT, looking like 1/4” to me. You Aussies may use British Straight or Tapered threads, but if it’s made in China it’s probably NPT for the US.
I would suggest using silicone for seals, especially where you can clamp two flat surfaces together. May also look into making that gap around the lid much smaller using tape, even to a point of interference fit seal.
