The rock and mineral preparation lab houses equipment for preparing earth materials for additional analyses. Rock and mineral specimens may be crushed or cut, ground, and polished as needed for petrological or geochemical evaluation. The equipment is available for student use in research and coursework.
Equipment
- Thin section cutoff saw and grinder
- Epoxy station for optical and disc mounting
- 5" low-speed saw
- 15" slab saw
- 8" trim saw
- Drying and curing oven
- Vacuum desiccator
- Chipmunk jaw crusher (reduces coarse gravels to pea-sized)
- Plattner Mortar (reduces small volume of gravels to pea-sized)
- Tungsten carbide shatter box (reduces pea-sized gravels to fine powder)
- Tungsten carbide ball mill (reduces pea-sized gravels to coarse powder)
- Grinding wheels
- Two-speed polishing wheels
- Auto polisher
Applications
- Standard petrographic thin sections
- 1" polished disc mounts for reflection petrography, LIBS, electron microscopy, microprobe or LA-ICP-MS analysis.
- Reduction for X-ray Powder Diffractometry
- Reduction for X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometry
The Rock and Mineral Prep lab is managed by Dr. Jonathan Price