I always run with those kinds of adapters. I would say however there is a huge difference between the lab society offer and that labboy one. If you want something durable that won’t cause u to chase a buncha leaks I’d spend the extra $
Edit: the above link would be for the head sorry about that. This is the link for your BF
Here is our test result from one of our first pass. NOTE: we use CO2 refined oil that we pull inhouse.
I’ve noticed there’s a learning curve for most scientific heating applications. I’ve found if you raise in increments of 3-5 you’ll never overshoot over 2-3degrees. If you jump something from 120-140 you best believe it’s going to overshoot close to 150. Insulate and wrap everything, I thought the top heating element wasn’t a necessity when I ran my first 20 on a Glas col. I was wrong. Temp diff from glass to head was 10C
Yea I never had more than a 2-3 degree diff when sitting at the same number. That’s extra for sure, our first units mag stirrer came in broken. They tried making us fix it and after I did It shorted again complained and said wtf this ain’t my job send me a new one. Good luck
That’s shit customer service for sure.
For sure. I just did a quick google search to point him in the right direction.
Thats a pretty big up and down swing. I would try what was mentioned above and see if that helps. If not get on the phone with whoever you bought the mantel from. Maybe they can help you figure it out. Getting rid of the glass thermowell should really help. Less of a barrier for the heat to get to the probe. Good luck post your results.
It looks like your “P” value is too high. The I and D values need to be adjusted to have more influence. The delta between set-point and measured should converge after a while, ie those swings become smaller and smaller
Yup agreed. After deep diving into PID controllers i just need to apply the knowledge to THIS controller itself. Thank you for the information.
ugh, no no no - that is expensive equipment don’t tell OP to spend more money without at least trying to solve his problem first. Glas col is the shit, OP just needs to read the manual - I can almost guarantee he’s running with too high a power level. There is literally a paragraph in their manual about this exact issue and how to fix it - that’s how commonly their customer support dept. hears this question. That mantle and controller as nice as fuck, I promise you - unless there’s a defect - glas col is very fine equipment. If you run a 5L or even a 22L at 100% power thru a glas-col controller you’re going to see this exact problem - I have been here and this is how you fix it. Those controllers can be used on 200L electric mantles and 100 mL mantles - they need to be capable of providing sufficient power to either type of equipment. If you run a 100 mL mantle with the same output power level as a 200L, you’ll see enormous overshoot and fluctuation. Factory setting on this controller is 100%, you need to drop that value down to like 20-50% for mantles between 1L and 22L.
@Toeknee956 shoot me a DM and I will send you the manual for this controller (of which I own several, because like I said they are absolutely not bad equipment), but you should have been provided one with your purchase. The quick answer is, hold the up/down arrows for 3 second to open the menu, use the cycle button (circular arrows button) to cycle thru the menu until you see “o.hi.1” which is “Power Scale Output High 1” and you’ll probably see its set to 100. You wanna drop that to like 50 using up/down arrow, hit the infinity button to enter the value and try again. If the problem persists, drop it further. The further you drop it, the less overshoot you’ll see but also the slower the heating. If you drop it too low, you may notice its not able to attain/maintain certain temperatures because the system is losing heat to the environment faster than you’re providing heat - so you can’t drop this value too low. Register your product with glas-col, if it truly is broken they will replace it hassle free - again they are a reputable company and these mantles have been something of a gold standard for a long time.
I would suggest you actually validate/quality your equipment’s functionality before using it in production. I would not set up a big distillation in brand new equipment because what if it IS broken? Then you’ve got a bigger problem. I would suggest something along the lines of adjust your power level as I described, and run a manual temperature ramp with the flask full of water (with stirring) to sort of mimic your use case. Sometimes I don’t set my controller directly to 100C (for instance), I’ll set it to 50C…let it heat up…then set it to 80C…let it heat up…set it to 100C. You might also want to include a temperature probe on the outside of the mantle (between the fabric and the outside of your flask) just to monitor how hot the actual mantle is getting compared to the internal temperature of your flask because you want to make sure you don’t have an enormous temperature difference between the inside and outside of the flask.
Going through the same troubles myself with AUS a lab 5 liter mantle… Cracked a boiling flask full of water trying to do a low heat ramp up at atmospheric pressure…30c SP nothing crazy… Thought a dry thermowell may have been the problem but turns out the top heated jacket portion was sending heat output non regulated at 300c+ at a time. Tech at USA lab said that the top jacket was getting so hot it scorched their work table…waiting in usa lab parking lot as they auto tune the new unit with silicon oil at 150c 
hope everyone is able to work out the fine tuning
I would have to agree with you 100% about this statement. I was going to walk OP through the process of configuration but you beat me to it. These mantles are high quality and highly adjustable so just tuning it properly will yield excellent results.
side note…what are you logging this data with? I have e a lot of pen and paper tracking that I would love to chart out like that…maybe even input the data in the computer as it rolls instead of notebook and translating later
haha right on. let it be known, if anyone has this equipment and disagrees with me…I will begrudgingly take them off your hands and spare you the nuisance…
Same here…I got my 20L glas-col mantle with dual 110V heating bands for $700 brand new because the owner couldn’t figure it out and never used it. I got the dual temp controller and separate speed controller (both glas-col brand) from eBay for $300 used.
I couldn’t be happier with its performance
perhaps you are who I am bidding against on ebay for those parts haha. I’ve taken to buying the dual load receptacle controllers with the stir/speed control (when I can, they’re expensive/less available used) so I can have pretty much everything I need in one piece of hardware. That isn’t to say I dont also have some used stir controllers/temp controllers…but it sometimes takes up too much room in the hood having two devices that could feasibly exist in one piece of hardware. Admittedly, I less commonly use magnetic stirring above 1L scale because overhead stirring is superior in most applications other than distillation which requires high vacuum (overhead bore-through stir bearings don’t make a great seal with the glass stir shaft. And much below 1 L scale I use cheaper fabric mantles with a stir plate beneath them.
its not elegant, but I’ve been forced to use a separate controller for the top mantle at times. Consider that your temperature probe is presumably in the flask submerged in liquid that is getting heated almost exclusively from the bottom mantle and the controller uses the data from that probes location to decide if it needs to heat more or less. The controller doesn’t know anything about your configuration. It only knows its providing power to two load receptacles, that it needs to provide more power when the temperature its reads is below the set point and less/no power when the temperature is above the set point. Since the top mantle is not really doing much to influence the liquid temperature below the controllers is just sending power to something with isnt raising the temperature so it sends more and more power - suddenly your top mantle is like 300C and rising because it only knows that providing more power/heating SHOULD raise the temperature its able to read. If your glas col controller has two load receptacles, you can adjust their power output independently - you can set the bottom to 50% and the top to like 15% and see if that works. What anyone really ought to do is have an independent temperature probes in all heating zones - K type wire probes are cheap (under $10). Before you begin heating, put a probe between you bottom mantle and the glass, and a second between the top mantle and the glass and just monitor the temperature with a thermocouple reader to make sure one heating zone isn’t doing anything unpredictable.
I will offer a extra 500 dollar credit to trade in your glass col mantle for Techno-Heat mantle. I saw someone said they paid 700 for thiers and I would say that 500 is a good trade on credit. I will also offer a money back guarantee it will outperform and it comes with free software to automate it.
