Home › Forums › Freebies, Sales, Trades › 13 year old kid would love to borrow an oscilloscope to build mass spectrometer.
- This topic has 7 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 6 years, 2 months ago by florida.
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April 10, 2020 at 7:02 pm #975576
flouroantimonic_acidParticipantHi, I’m Sam Kothe, a 13 year old maker whose most recent project is building a small, simple mass spectrometer, a scientific instrument to detect what elements make up a substance. I’ve wanted to build some sort of apparatus like it (e.g., a nuclear fusion reactor, which I completely designed and parted out previously but which was vetoed by my mom) but cost has always been a major concern.
A mass spectrometer would likely cost under $100 to build except for the oscilloscope, required for reading out the graph of the data, which would triple the cost at $200 (including shipping, which is often 2-3x the listing price) even for the cheapest of used scopes on eBay – far beyond my budget.
I would likely need to borrow the scope for roughly 4-5 months, until I’ve completed the project. Thank you so much for your consideration, this has been a dream of mine for quite some time.
Thanks,
SamP.S. I’m following an article in the American Journal of Physics that can be found here: https://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1119/1.1969211
April 11, 2020 at 4:26 pm #975677
CMParticipantI’m impressed, you’re going to go places! Check Amazon. They have a fair number of decent smaller O-scopes available for less than $100. Some of their open source ones are in the $20-30 range. Granted, they don’t have all the features of a $300 scope, but they work well.
April 12, 2020 at 4:34 am #975730
flouroantimonic_acidParticipantCM, thanks for your response! I’ll check amazon and see if any of the inexpensive ones have the mode I need, X-Y mode. Hopefully some will have it. I love the look of the old CRT oscilloscopes so much though – they’re so charming! I guess it’ll be good to have my own scope, it’s quite the tool.
April 14, 2020 at 4:24 pm #975896
CMParticipantAny luck? I don’t know the exact specs you need. x-y mode will probably keep you away from the really inexpensive ones, but I don’t know. You sound pretty creative, so maybe some of the open source ones would allow you to modify a cheap one into what you need? There’s probably an online community to help with that.
I spent a lot of time looking at green traces on old CRT scopes. I know what you mean.
Hey, just checked. There are a fair number of 2 channel (x-y) scopes and even a kit (!) for around $100 and down. They are USB based, but still would be cool.
- This reply was modified 6 years, 4 months ago by CM.
May 10, 2020 at 5:28 pm #977906
benschweParticipantHey! I have an old 2 channel Tektronix 465 o-scope with a CRT screen that you are free to borrow as long as you need. I have 2 probes as well.
May 29, 2020 at 2:09 am #979306
jtgParticipantRE-PC in sodo often has several for cheap.
May 30, 2020 at 3:17 pm #979438
birdrescuerParticipantDid you get what you wanted? Contact me here if you haven’t yet.
June 5, 2020 at 8:30 am #980014
floridaParticipant -
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