Cheminst: talk & activity

In Februrary 2006, the vernerable VXR-300 console was evicted.

A bigger newer system had claimed its space, so its maget of many years was put out to storage. It was rolled down the hallway and connected to the old solids magnet. At first everything seemed fine. Lineshape was good. Unfortunately, carbon was not good. Protons were always coupled. After a month of searching for an unconnected cable or a bad connection, it became apparent that the input to the synthesizer board was out of spec. The lock frequency controled the input, and had been changed to lock on the new magnet. The fixed frequency decoupler needed a different field strength to work.

In November 2006, we plunged the charging rod into the magnet and turned on the BCN-60. The goal was to increase the lock thumbwheels to decouple protons. To our surprise, we had to lower the magnetic field to do this. With a 25 year old power supply, it is sometimes difficult to close the cryo-switch. This time was no exception. On the third try, we were able to close the switch and remove the charging rod.

Its good to have proton decoupled carbon again.