Scientific apparatus
Scientific Apparatus
The 20th Century was a period where most scientific apparatus was developed within universities. However now, in the 21st Century scientific apparatus development appears to occur within specific companies and then used either commercially or within universities. My own experience developing scientific apparatus initially heavily relied on the ‘in house’ university expertise of workshop engineers and software specialist and looking back, I now realise this was a ‘great and exciting journey’.
Centro Symmetric Flow Devices
This section describes in photographs and conference presentations the development of a number of centro symmetric flow devices.
Find out more > Bristol Extensional flow Apparatus
Find out more > Extensional Flow.
Cambridge Shear Cell
The Cambridge Shear Cell was initially developed to study the flow behaviour of Liquid Crystal Polymers (LCP). The apparatus is now manufactured by Linkam Scientific and used throughout the world for many different fluid systems.
Find out more > Cambridge Shear Cell
Cambridge Multipass Rheometer
This apparatus was developed at Cambridge in the 1990s and has in the past been used extensively by the Polymer Fluids Group to study polymer melt processing behaviour.
Find out more > Cambridge Multipass Rheometer
Cambridge Trimaster
This apparatus was initially developed with Dr Tri Tuladhar at Cambridge and was specifically built to study the extensional deformation, thinning and break up of ink jet fluids.
Find out more > UCL Trimaster 2019 (v2) (.pdf)
Filament stretch and breakup.
Work on filament breakup carried out in conjunction with CEMEF at Sophia Antipolis, France in the 2000s, can be found at;
Find out more > Ink jet and filament stretch
Inventing apparatus and processes
Before I left Cambridge I gave a Departmental Seminar on “Inventing apparatus and processes”. The presentation is relevant to both this apparatus section and the innovation section. I included in the presentation a number of pictures that had influenced me during my career. I also included some quotes from a book by Haruki Marukami which I had read just before preparing my last departmental seminar.
Find out more > Inventing apparatus and processes 2011 (v2) (.pdf)