RECOMMENDATION FOR FREEZE DRYERS

[Heather H Lord]

dudy bar-zvi (dbarzvi at bgumail.bgu.ac.il) wrote:
: Dear Netters,

: We would like to purchase a new freeze dryer, and would appreciate to 
: hear from good or bad experience that you have with freeze dryers from 
: different makers.

Our department has a Labconco 6L basic model (no shell freezer, no 
stoppering tray) and an Edwards E2M8 pump.  We had a few initial 
problems, mostly minor.  The sales rep and the product literature told us it 
would need a 15 amp plug (standard electrical outlet here) and when it arrived
it needed a 20 amp plug.  For us this meant a 2 week wait to get the 
university electricians to install the special plug.  Also, after about 2 
years, we received notice that the defrost units on these machines had 
been overheating, and would have to be retrofitted with some control 
gadgetry.  The company did this free of charge, but it took several 
months from the time of the notice to the time of the retrofit, during 
which time we were not supposed to use the defrost cycle.  The most 
annoying problem was that the stainless steel drying chamber, (the 
cylinder with the holes for the rubber valves) had not had its cut edges 
finished properly.  The edges of the holes were quite sharp and cut most 
of the rubber valves when I installed them, causing a lot of vacuum 
leaks.  With only a small amount of prompting however, the company 
replaced all of the valves and sent a service tech to file down the edges 
of the holes.

Otherwise the instrument has run flawlessly since day one and seems to be 
quite well designed.  It is easy to clean (oil spills from careless oil 
changes) and easy to service the pump.  It is easy to clean out the condensing
chamber and straightforward to use.  It even has basic operating instructions
printed on the front panel. 

Heather