Luan Heywood
Summary
81 small-format thin sections were prepared on Expedition 393, mostly polished and some with cover-slips. Thin-sectioned material was dominantly basalt with various alteration halos, veins and in-filled vesicles. A few pillow breccias and three limestone thin-sections were prepared. Few samples required impregnation.
Buehler PetroThin
Despite the installation of two additional in-line water traps, water was still observed in the vacuum oil. This water must have been condensed out of the vapor phase, as liquid water was never observed in the secondary or tertiary in-line water traps. Short of the installation of a condenser, it seems like the current maintenance routine of periodic replacement of the pump oil and cleaning of internal rust should delay long-term destruction of the attached vacuum pump.
Additionally, the vacuum chuckface of the PetroThin was observed to be physically worn, and was replaced with a newer chuck equipped with a new size 32 mm ID-3 mm thickness o-ring. Replacement of the chuckface decreased the amount of water that was observed to enter the vacuum system. An inquiry has been made to Buehler about the possibility of purchasing additional replacement chuckfaces.
Logitech LP-50
The constant operation of the Logitech LP-50 equipped with the Automatic Flatness Monitor (as recommended by the manufacturer) was observed to cause an annular groove to be worn into the iron lap wheel. The damage was observed visually, as well as resulting in progressively increasing measured concavity. This was remedied by running the weighted test block using SiC abrasive for a period of hours (generally around two) without the Automatic Flatness Monitor. To prevent further damage, the LP-50 was generally run using the Automatic Flatness Monitor only briefly to check the plate flatness, with the Monitor removed during longer periods of operation.
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The PLJ2 jig with serial number 287 was used during this expedition. Periodic preventative maintenance on all jigs will be carried out during the upcoming transit.
Logitech PM-5
On the preceding Exp 390, a leaking Abrasive Autofeed Cylinder was swapped out with a spare. The new cylinder’s valve was disassembled/reassembled using the following instructions to allow for drip rate adjustment: Logitech Abrasive Autofeed Cylinder reassembly instructions.
Laboratory consumables and other equipment
Epotek Epoxy
Twice during the expedition, the opened container of Epotek epoxy became unusable due to precipitated solids in the Epotek Part B, which cause bubbles and poorly bonded slides. The wasted volume of was not a problem, due to the large biannual purchase minimum for Epotek. In both cases, the opened kit of Epotek was disposed of via solidification. Solidification is currently the preferred method of epoxy disposal, however it should be noted that for larger quantities, the reaction is mildly exothermic and can spill out of the container.
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