Repair knob shaft, yellow stirplate hot plate Thermo SP131325 Cimarec

These common yellow stir-plates by Thermo Scientific/Cimarec have plastic potentiometer shafts, knobs easily broken off.

But Thermo no longer sells the replacement pot assembly! The pots themselves aren't sold anywhere either. It's an OEM part from CTS Electrocomponents, with a big plastic spacer and extra-long shaft. And power switch.

BUT, we can dissect the broken pot and reconstruct it. Keep the shell, but use internal parts from other pots.

Buy these 100K pots:

450D104-8-ND (digikey) 450T328F104A1C1 (digikey)

The long plastic shaft from the 450D104 can be cut down and used to replace the (too short) metal one. And, the rotor-assembly from the metal one will work inside the original Thermo pot.

Here at Chem Dept. the undergrads occasionally shear off the pot-knobs. Should we just throw away a perfectly good $500 stirplate?!! We can fix this.

Other repair parts are still available, see

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Reply to
William Beaty
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That doesn't surprise me, CTS used to sell a universal line of pots which were like a do-it-yourself construction.

You ordered the pot body (ohms, linear/taper, spade or eyelet) then selected the shaft (metal/plastic, stub or up to 6/7 inches).

Some of the options were two bodies could click together making a dual one, then they had a shaft (split or half-moon) that fit both straight through and or a hollow one for the front and a solid thin one to the rear.

Some could even mount a power switch on the back, turn to click on or push-pull.

It was a clever design but really made for repairs rather than production but I could see in small enough quantities it might of been cheaper than ordering custom built ones.

It was all snap and click, no screwing around with e or c-clips.

-bruce snipped-for-privacy@ripco.com

Reply to
bje

I still have a box of Allen-Bradley DIY pots from eBay.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 

http://electrooptical.net 
http://hobbs-eo.com
Reply to
Phil Hobbs

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