{"id":186,"date":"2012-07-17T23:31:57","date_gmt":"2012-07-17T23:31:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/innovscience.com\/wordpress\/?p=186"},"modified":"2012-07-17T23:38:14","modified_gmt":"2012-07-17T23:38:14","slug":"andrews-glass-company-an-american-company-that-makes-a-good-product","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/innovscience.com\/wordpress\/uncategorized\/andrews-glass-company-an-american-company-that-makes-a-good-product\/","title":{"rendered":"Andrew\u2019s Glass Company- An American Company that Makes a Good Product"},"content":{"rendered":"

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With globalization and greed in full swing we get to see the aftermath that programs such as NAFTA as pushed by the Clintons, Al Gore and the Republican Congress (under the stewardship of Bohemian Grove camper,1<\/sup> Newt Gingrich) have had on America.\u00a0 The fruits of their labor have been a continuation of the serfdom agenda for the middle class with concomitant accruing of value for the top few percent.\u00a0 Bunches of low hanging fruit can be seen throughout much of the US, regardless of where my travels take me.\u00a0 They are the shells of old factories, store shelves stocked to the gill with \u201cMade in China\u201d products,2<\/sup> and the ever so present real estate sign advertising \u201cfor sale, rent or lease.\u201d\u00a0 The fact is the US produces very little these days in terms of actual consumer goods.\u00a0 Likewise, I\u2019ve noticed that many products which scientists depend on are now being cranked out in China.\u00a0 This initial diatribe, is not to be misinterpreted as angst against the Chinese but instead to contrast the subject of this actual blog post, that being Andrew\u2019s Glass Company.<\/p>\n

If I had to suggest one product made in America that would be a worthwhile investment of money and great addition to the laboratory I would say that hands down Andrew\u2019s Glass would be near the top.\u00a0 The main products they sell (or at least the ones I\u2019m most familiar with) are glass pressure reactors.\u00a0 My favorite is currently the 3 oz bottle of the footed variety (see above).\u00a0 This little guy is a workhorse and despite its small size he is not to be underestimated (yes, they are male).3<\/sup>\u00a0 Now one thing I need to mention before I go much further is that these reactors are originally encased in a protective plastic coating (probably to retain glass fragments in the event of an explosion) but I always remove this as soon as possible.\u00a0 Removing this plastic coating probably voids any warranty that might come with the glass (if there is any) but the fact is it obscures the reactor contents (especially their true color) and I\u2019ve been told that it does not fare well when heated in a drying oven.\u00a0 Regardless of whether you keep the plastic coating on or not (and I\u2019m not telling you to remove it) I highly suggest not only using the stainless steel mesh shielding sold by Andrew\u2019s Glass Company but also to use a blast shield when possible for redundant safety.\u00a0 These small reaction vessels are quite robust in terms of their operational pressure (rated > 200 psi); however, in practice I suggest using them at 50 % maximum operational pressure and make provisions for safety pressure release valves set to crack when they see pressure in excess of this amount.\u00a0 These reactors are in truth the \u201cpoor man\u2019s autoclave reactor.\u201d\u00a0 For those of you who need to operate at moderately high pressure and don\u2019t have money for a autoclave reactor this is one way to get around that obstacle.\u00a0 Another thing is for the cost of a small autoclave you can have at least 10 complete reactor setups (including all compression fitting components) which translates into massive returns when it comes to productivity.\u00a0 Moreover, it is much easier to clean the glass pressure reactor than it is an autoclave (again saving time).<\/p>\n

One other thing I need to say on behalf of Andrew\u2019s Glass Company is that the sales representatives I\u2019ve dealt with have been good overall.\u00a0 Moreover, when I informed the company of my intention to discuss their product in a book that I am working on they offered to discount their products.\u00a0 This is greatly appreciated and something that you definitely do not run into very often.<\/p>\n

There are only two negatives (as I see it) to Andrew\u2019s Glass pressure reactors.\u00a0 The first is cost.\u00a0 These pieces of glass are expensive (> $ 200) but since they are made in the U.S. and they are specialty glass I understand the cost.\u00a0 The other problem that I have run into with these reaction vessels is that after repeated use > 100 experiments in at least two vessels I had unusual cracking\/chipping (see below).\u00a0 This may have occurred due to the repeated temperature cycles that these vessels see (drying > 100 \u00b0C and reaction temps as low as \u2013 80 \u00b0C).\u00a0 Possibly, minor impact to the vessel causes a small locus of failure to occur at and then repeated heating and cooling do the rest?\u00a0 I\u2019ve brought this sort of defect to the attention of Andrew\u2019s Glass in the past but haven\u2019t had any return input from them concerning this sort of failure.\u00a0 Should the reader have experienced similar behavior please feel free to contact me.<\/p>\n

In conclusion, I find this company\u2019s products to be some of the best I have encountered in terms of \u201cMade in America\u201d and highly recommend them.<\/p>\n

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  1. I found Luke Rudkowski\u2019s recent and direct confrontation of Newt in regards to Newt\u2019s denials (i.e. lies) of being a Bohemian Grover refreshing and applaud this young man for confronting such evil.<\/li>\n
  2. The sad fact is many of these products are made using technology originally developed in the U.S. and in many cases with investment capital that was U.S. owned (e.g. equipment\/tooling) and in some cases (e.g. Chevy) the company in question was bailed out by taxpayers only to fund their move to China.<\/li>\n
  3. Of course they are sexless; however, this will setup a future blog post on the purposeful destruction of the sciences in the guise of equality.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    With globalization and greed in full swing we get to see the aftermath that programs such as NAFTA as pushed by the Clintons, Al Gore and the Republican Congress (under the stewardship of Bohemian Grove camper,1 Newt Gingrich) have had … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pb8bvA-30","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/innovscience.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/innovscience.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/innovscience.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovscience.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovscience.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/innovscience.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":188,"href":"https:\/\/innovscience.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186\/revisions\/188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/innovscience.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovscience.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovscience.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}