The gallery below shows a translatable visible spectrometer I built in grad school. I used this to study CdSe nanoparticle synthesis in-situ at relevant conditions (up to 260degC). I designed and built the translatable stage which uses stepper motors mounted to a cheap XY stage. It is controlled with a 3d printer controller. I wrote a LabVIEW program to control the translation stage, spectrometer, and the syringe pumps. Data analysis and preliminary population balance modeling were all done by me in Mathematica.
Some additional build pictures are below. A few different flow reactors are shown. Some are simple teflon capillary in a machined aluminum assembly while some are cleanroom prepared all glass microfluidic reactors. All hardware, software, electronics, etc were designed and made by me. The spectrometer is an Ocean Optics fiber optic based system. This gave a significant open path length (around 6” between optics) where I could arrange the reactors.
